quark
n. countablen. a tiny piece of matter that is even smaller than an atom. These small parts join together to make up protons and neutrons in the center of atoms.
n. any of a group of subatomic particles believed to be among the fundamental constituents of matter. These particles carry a fractional electric charge and are never observed in isolation, existing only within composite particles called hadrons.
Scientists study how each quark moves inside a proton.
Physicists use massive particle accelerators to observe the behavior of a quark during high-energy collisions.
The standard model of particle physics identifies six distinct flavors of quark, which interact via the strong force mediated by the exchange of gluons.
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.
Primarily used in the context of particle physics; the plural form is 'quarks'.