noun

• (military) A small firework that is intended to spew sparks rather than explode.
  "English Navy squibs set fire to two dozen enemy ships in a Dutch harbor during the 16th-century battle against the Spanish Armada."
• (mining) A kind of slow match or safety fuse.
• (US) Any small firecracker sold to the general public, usually in special clusters designed to explode in series after a single master fuse is lit.
• (firearms) A malfunction in which the fired projectile does not have enough force behind it to exit the barrel, and thus becomes stuck.

verb

• (colloquial, dated, ambitransitive) To throw squibs; to utter sarcastic or severe reflections; to contend in petty dispute.
  "to squib a little debate"
• (Australia) To dodge something difficult, to bottle.
  "He squibbed the opportunity to push the claim that Kyoto should remain the flagship for international action - because deep down those on the other side know that the world has moved on beyond Kyoto."