quark

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[edit] English

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[edit] Etymology 1

First used in 1963 by the discoverer of quarks, Murray Gell-Mann, to name these new particles. The literary connection to James Joyce's Finnegans Wake was asserted later (quote below).

[edit] Pronunciation

  • (UK) IPA: /kwɔːk/, /kwɑːk/
  • (US) IPA: /kwɔɻk/, /kwɑɻk/

[edit] Noun

Singular
quark

Plural
quarks

quark (plural quarks)

  1. (physics) In the Standard Model, an elementary subatomic particle which forms matter. Quarks are never found alone in nature and combine to form hadrons, such as protons and neutrons.
    1993: Gell-Mann won the linguistic battle once again: his choice, a croaking nonsense word, was "quark". (After the fact, he was able to tack on a literary antecedent when he found the phrase "Three quarks for Muster Mark" in Finnegans Wake, but the physicists quark was pronounced from the beginning to rhyme with "cork".)James Gleick, Genius: Richard Feynman and Modern Physics
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[edit] Etymology 2

German Quark, from Middle High German quarc

[edit] Alternative spellings

[edit] Noun

Singular
quark

Plural
uncountable

quark (uncountable)

  1. a soft creamy cheese. The Russian quark and Finnish quark are somewhat different. The Russian version is firmer in consistency and contains about 15% milk fat, whereas the Finnish quark often contains less than 1% milk fat.
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[edit] Galician

[edit] Noun

quark m. (plural quarks)

  1. (physics) quark

[edit] Italian

[edit] Etymology

English

[edit] Noun

quark m. inv.

  1. (physics) quark