Word
quark
US/ˈkwɑɹk/
UK/kwˈɑːk/
Definitions
01physics particle
n. a tiny part of an atom that is smaller than a proton or neutron.
n. an elementary subatomic particle that carries a fractional electric charge and serves as a fundamental constituent of matter.
“Scientists study how quarks join together to form the center of an atom.”
“In the Standard Model of particle physics, quarks are considered fundamental entities that never appear in isolation under normal conditions.”
Technical
Usage
Usually used in the plural when discussing the composition of matter.
Synonyms
02soft cheese
n. a soft, white, creamy cheese that is popular in Europe.
n. a type of fresh, unripened cheese made from cow's milk, characterized by a mild flavour and smooth texture.
“You can use quark instead of cream cheese to make a healthier cake.”
“The recipe calls for five hundred grams of low-fat quark, which provides a distinctively tangy profile compared to traditional heavy cream.”
Synonyms
03computing identifier
n. a number used by a computer program to represent a specific piece of text.
n. an integer that uniquely identifies a specific text string within a software environment.
“The system assigns a quark to each unique name to save memory.”
“By mapping frequently used strings to unique quarks, the developer significantly reduced the overhead of string comparison operations within the kernel.”
Technical
Synonyms
Real-World Examples
“Quarks, electrons, and other fundamental particles would be mass-free in a Higgsless cosmos, but when they interact with that field, they pick up mass.” “When atomic nuclei crash into one another at nearly the speed of light, they briefly produce quark-gluon plasma, an extraordinarily hot state of matter in which quarks and gluons can move freely.” “RHIC collision data suggest baryon number is carried not simply by three quarks, but by a Y-shaped junction of the gluons connecting them.” Etymology
Sense 1 (“subatomic particle”) was coined by the American physicist Murray Gell-Mann (1929–2019) in 1963, apparently an arbitrary word. Subsequently, in a letter dated 27 June 1978 to the editor of the Oxford English Dictionary Supplement, Gell-Mann associated the word with the sentence “Three quarks for Muster Mark!” from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (1939) and indicated that he pronounced the word /kwɔɹk/, reasoning that the sentence referred to a call in a pub for “three quarts”. However, the context in the book indicates that quark is probably a variant of quawk (“harsh call of a bird”) and was intended by Joyce to be pronounced /kwɑːk/, the modern pronunciation.
[Alt: A spoonful of quark cheese served with tomato slices on a plate] Borrowed from German Quark (“cottage cheese; curds; curd cheese”), from late Middle High German twarc, from a West Slavic language, possibly Lower Sorbian twarog (compare Polish twaróg), from Proto-Slavic tvarogъ (“quark”), probably related to tvorìti (“to make”), from Proto-Indo-European *twerH- (“to enclose, fence in; to grab, seize”). Doublet of tvorog and twaróg.
Onomatopoeic, from the sound of the squawk.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Domain
Scan code
englishreference.com/q/quark