Etymology 1 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.
1
Natural sciences, Physical sciences, PhysicsParticle In the Standard Model, one of a number of elementary subatomic particles having fractional electric charge that forms matter. They are theorized not to exist in isolation, but only in combinations in hadrons such as neutrons and protons or in quark–gluon plasmas.
A simpler and more elegant scheme can be constructed if we allow non-integral values for the charges. We can dispense entirely with the basic baryon b if we assign to the triplet t the following properties: spin #92;frac#123;1#125;#123;2#125;, z#61;#123;-#92;frac#123;1#125;#123;31964 February 1, M[urray] Gell-Mann, “A Schematic Model of Baryons and Mesons”, in Physics Letters, volume 8, number 3, Amsterdam, North Holland: North-Holland Publishing Company, →DOI, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 23 Jun 2022, page 214, column 2:
There are six known quarks in nature, the up, down, strange, charm, bottom, and the top quark. The quarks are arranged in three pairs or "generations". Each member of a pair may be transformed into its partner via the charged-current weak interaction. Together with the six known leptons (the electron, muon, tau, and their associated neutrinos), the six quarks constitute all of the known luminous matter in the universe. The understanding of the properties of the quarks and leptons and their interactions is therefore of paramount importance.2006 December, Arnuf Quadt, “Top Quark Physics at Hadron Colliders”, in The European Physical Journal C: Particles and Fields, Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg: Springer, →DOI, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 835, column 1; republished as Douglas H. Beck, Dieter Haidt, John W[illiam] Negele, editors, Top Quark Physics at Hadron Colliders (Advances in the Physics of Particles and Nuclei; 28), Berlin; Heidelberg: Springer, 2007, →ISBN, page 1:
1 more example
There were also particles no one had predicted that just appeared. Five of them are of interest to me here. In order of increasing modernity, they are the neutrino, the pi meson, the antiproton, the quark and the Higgs boson. […] It fairly rapidly became clear to physicists that free quarks were not going to be found. Making a virtue out of necessity, they invented a dynamics that would permanently confine quarks within particles. In this scenario quarks exchange particles called gluons. […] There is no escape. Quarks are imprisoned forever.2012 March-April, Jeremy Bernstein, “A Palette of Particles”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 2, New Haven, Conn.: Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 12 Apr 2023, page 146:
2
Computing, Engineering, Mathematics, Natural sciences, Physical sciences, SciencesBroadly An integer that uniquely identifies a text string.
X Window System
Two functions are provided to convert between strings and quarks: XrmStringToQuark and XrmQuarkToString […] The second takes a quark as its parameter and returns a pointer to its associated string; it is used primarily for debugging and runtime error messages.1992, Keith D. Gregory, “Resources Revisited”, in Programming with Motif, New York, N.Y.: Springer-Verlag New York, →DOI, →ISBN, page 453:
Etymology [Alt: A spoonful of quark cheese served with tomato slices on a plate] Borrowed from German Quark (“cottage cheese; curds; curd cheese”). Doublet of tvorog and twaróg.
1
A soft, creamy, unripened cheese made from cow's milk, originating from and eaten throughout central, northern, eastern, and southeastern Europe, as well as the Low Countries.
quark
noun
Etymology Onomatopoeic, from the sound of the squawk.
1
Informal The black-crowned night heron (Nycticorax nycticorax).