"war with words" aka "paper war"?

[Joel S. Berson]

At 2/1/2014 09:06 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>Yahoo! news headline:
>
>
>Magic Johnson calls off his needless, one-sided war with words with Lakers
>coach Mike D'Antoni.
>
>It's a kind of "war" that uses words as "weapons." The absurd "war of
>words," said by old people, means that the words "belong to" the war. Which
>is just so bogus and illogical.

Even older people might say "paper war".  OED3 has a quotation from
1710, and the New-England Courant has one from 1721 Nov. 6, 3/2:

"By the two following Paragraphs taken from different Prints from
London, we find that the Experiment of inoculating the Small Pox is
like to give the same Occasion of a Paper-War there, as it has lately
given among our selves."

Joel

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