quark

Pronunciation

• IPA: /kwɑːk/, /kwɑɹk/^[1]

Etymology

Coined in 1964 by the American physicist Murray Gell-Mann,^[2][3][4] who told the OED in 1978 that he took it from the line “Three quarks for Muster Mark!” in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake (1939),^[2][5][6][4] though the sound of the word had been in his head before he saw it in print.^[2] He had at first spelled it quork.^[4] Joyce's quark suggests the cawing of a bird, from the verb quark “to croak” (1860).^[6][4][7] German Quark “curds, rubbish” has also been proposed as an inspiration.^[8][2]

The cheese is a separate word, borrowed from German Quark, from Middle High German quarc, of Slavic origin.^[6][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

A hypothetical subatomic particle with a fractional electric charge (1964).^[7][8][2][3]

Semantic evolution

The word appealed to Gell-Mann because only three kinds of quark, now called up, down and strange, were then thought to exist, matching Joyce's “three quarks”.^[4][8] Later physics added further “flavours”, charm, bottom and top, and the property called “colour”.^[9] Gell-Mann's co-proposer George Zweig is said to have preferred the name ace.^[2] Gell-Mann rhymed the word with cork, while Joyce's rhymes with Mark.^[5]

Timeline

• 1860 – quark, verb, to croak.^[7]
• 1931 – quark, a soft German cheese.^[7]
• 1939 – “Three quarks for Muster Mark!” (Joyce).^[2][4]
• 1964 – the subatomic particle.^[7][8][2][3]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. (physics) Any of a group of elementary particles with an electric charge of one-third or two-thirds that of the electron, held to be the constituents of all hadrons, such as protons and neutrons.
2. A soft, creamy, unripened cheese of central Europe.

Word family

• quarkonium
• quark model

Related words

• hadron
• lepton
• boson
• antiquark

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas, Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d e f Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b Hendrickson, Robert (2008), The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, 4th ed., New York: Facts on File
6. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
7. ^ a b c d e Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
9. ^ Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1999), 2nd ed., New York: Random House