Yes, but. I have a 1920s edition of the Nibelungen Saga which uses an intentionally old-timey language; there I find "Wortstreit", obviously in contrast to a pr

Yes, but. I have a 1920s edition of the Nibelungen Saga which uses an intentionally old-timey language; there I find "Wortstreit", obviously in contrast to a proper Streit which would have involved physic force and maybe weapons. But in modern German, as in English, to use "Streit" for an armed conflict or "war" for physicists discussing the nature of things is not appropriate except as a rhetoric measure (downplay or exaggerate). Words change.