I quarreled

[constantinusphilo]

I quarreled with my uncle Anastasios, I gave English lessons, I taught the piano. (This is a quote from The Magus by John Folwes). Here, 'quarreled' refers to a recurrent action; how then to say ' to quarrel' once and for all? To have a quarrel? To quarrel up?

 

[Tarheel]

"I quarreled with my uncle Anastasios, I gave English lessons, I taught the piano." (This is a quote from The Magus by John Folwes). Here, 'quarreled' refers to a recurrent action; how then to say ' to quarrel' once and for all? To have a quarrel? To quarrel up?

I am not at all sure what you mean by "to quarrel once and for all".
:-?

Maybe you mean something like:

We argued ....

:-?

 

[teechar]

I quarreled with my uncle Anastasios, I gave English lessons, I taught the piano. (This is a quote from The Magus by John Folwes).

Strictly speaking, that's a run-on sentence (the commas are wrong). However, we'll let it pass (literary license, and not the main question here).

Here, 'quarreled' refers to a recurrent action, so how [STRIKE]then to[/STRIKE] can I say ' to quarrel only once'? [STRIKE]and for all?[/STRIKE] Should I, for example, use "to have a quarrel" or "to quarrel up"?

Note:
1- "quarrel up" is wrong. Forget about it.

2- "have a quarrel" is possible, and that would be one solution to your question.

3- The past simple is used:
a- to indicate a recurrent action in the past. For example, "When we lived in Athens, I quarreled with my uncle Anastasios".
b- to describe a single action in the past. For example, "Yesterday, I quarreled with my uncle Anastasios".
Context normally clarifies which use is intended.

 

[emsr2d2]

Just for information, the past simple in BrE is "quarrelled". It's a common BrE/AmE difference:

traveled/travelled
bejeweled/bejewelled

The second of those is reflected in the difference in spelling between "jewellery" (BrE) and "jewelry" (AmE). However, you will also notice that in AmE, there are only 2 "e"s in the word, but there are three in BrE.

 

[jutfrank]

You should know, constantinusphilo, that you've used the phrase once and for all in the wrong way, which has made your question unclear. It doesn't mean 'just one time', as you seem to think.

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/once-and-for-all

 

[constantinusphilo]

'Once and for all' means that something is done once and it cannot be redone.

 

[emsr2d2]

'Once and for all' means that something is done once and it cannot be redone.

It doesn't mean that it is/was done once.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

I quarreled with my uncle Anastasios, I gave English lessons, I taught the piano. . . .

It's not saying there was only one quarrel. It implies that it happened often, as giving piano and English lessons did. He's naming three regular activities: teaching piano, teaching English, and quarreling with his uncle. He's mentioning the quarrels in a tongue-in-cheek manner.

If there were only one quarrel, he would have said, "I had a quarrel with my uncle Anastasios, . . . ."

But that wouldn't fit the sense of the whole sentence. It's not what he meant.

For extra credit, Google parallelism.

 

[probus]

'Once and for all' means that something is done once and it cannot be redone.

To me, "once and for all" means permanently. But the doing need not be a unique occurrence. The thing might have been attempted previously but unsuccessfully. For example, Joe tried many times to quit smoking but failed. Eventually, he promised himself, he would succeed by quitting once and for all.