Did you know?
If you were a physics major, chances are that James Joyce didn’t make it onto your syllabus. While literature majors are likely more familiar with his work, Joyce has a surprising tie to physics. In the early 1960s, American physicist Murray Gell-Man came up with the word quork, which he used to refer to his concept of an elementary particle smaller than a proton or neutron (by his own account he was in the habit of using names like “squeak” and “squork” for peculiar objects). He later settled on the spelling quark after reading a line from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake: “Three quarks for Muster Mark! / Sure he has not got much of a bark / And sure any he has it’s all beside the mark.” The name stuck and has been used by physicists ever since.
Examples of quark in a Sentence
Big Think, 28 Oct. 2025
Gluons carry the strong nuclear force, which glues together fundamental particles called quarks to make protons and neutrons.
—Stephanie Pappas, Scientific American, 27 Oct. 2025
The relation is derived partially from the principles of quantum chromodynamics, or QCD, which is the theory of how the strong force binds particles called quarks to form particles such as neutrons.
—Keith Cooper, Space.com, 24 Oct. 2025
The universe is overwhelmingly made of matter, which is responsible for visible structures ranging from atoms to galaxies, and quarks to quasars.
—Chris Young, Interesting Engineering, 23 Oct. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Quark.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quark. Accessed 3 Nov. 2025.
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