A contretemps is a small clash between people — an argument or a disagreement that you do not want to treat as a war. The word almost always comes with a light, slightly teasing tone. You would not call a bitter family break-up a contretemps; you use it when you want to shrink the drama, as if to say “we had a little bump.” Writers and speakers who like a touch of French in their English reach for it, often with “a little” or “a slight” in front. Though actually, the French pieces mean “against time” — a step that landed on the wrong beat — and older English also used it for an unlucky mishap, an awkward accident as much as a quarrel. In today’s English the humorous “little disagreement” sense is the one you will hear most. It is not a classroom word and not a street word; it lives in newspapers, novels, and the talk of people who enjoy sounding dry.

小風波、小爭執（帶點輕鬆、調侃，不是大吵）