particle

noun par·ti·cle \ ˈpär-ti-kəl \

Updated on: 14 May 2018

Definition of particle

1 a : a minute quantity or fragment

b : a relatively small or the smallest discrete portion or amount of something

2 archaic : a clause or article of a composition or document

3 : any of the basic units of matter and energy (such as a molecule, atom, proton, electron, or photon)

4 : a unit of speech expressing some general aspect of meaning or some connective or limiting relation and including the articles, most prepositions and conjunctions, and some interjections and adverbs

the particle up has a perfective meaning in phrases such as beat up and cut up

5 : a small eucharistic wafer distributed to a Roman Catholic layman at Communion

See particle defined for English-language learners

See particle defined for kids

Examples of particle in a Sentence

There is not a particle of evidence to support their claim.
There is not a particle of truth in what he said.
The phrasal verb “look up” consists of the verb “look” and the adverbial particle “up.”

Recent Examples of particle from the Web

To see what was happening to these thirdhand smoke particles in the classroom, the researchers took a Pyrex container and blew cigarette smoke into it.

— karen kaplan, latimes.com, "This room was off-limits to smokers, but its air contained surprising amounts of 'thirdhand smoke'," 9 May 2018
Sometimes occupying as much space as a Walmart store and costing enough money to build a dozen elementary schools, the facilities zap cancer with beams of subatomic proton particles instead of conventional radiation.

— baltimoresun.com, "Maryland Proton Treatment Center's restructuring reflects a bubble in health care investment," 3 May 2018
These small particles cause a lot of trouble in people's respiratory and cardiovascular systems.

— emily hopkins, Indianapolis Star, "Indiana has a polluted reputation. Here's how bad it is.," 19 Apr. 2018
These rods were inserted into a nuclear reactor and bombarded with neutrons, tiny, uncharged subatomic particles, with the hope that some would get stuck to uranium atoms, increasing their atomic number to 239.

— julian g. west, The Atlantic, "The Atomic-Bomb Core That Escaped World War II," 2 Apr. 2018
These separate particles are constantly colliding, recombining, and becoming electrically neutral atoms again.

— grace donnelly, Fortune, "Elon Musk's Falcon 9 Rocket Tore a Hole in the Atmosphere," 26 Mar. 2018
But in 2014, physicists Steven Rose, Stuart Mangle and their colleagues from ICL proposed plans for an experiment that did not rely on these additional particles.

— aristos georgiou, Newsweek, "Physicists Are Trying to Turn Light Into Matter to Prove the 'Impossible'," 21 Mar. 2018
The smoker exhales some of these particles, which exposes bystanders to the emissions.

— Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, "Smoking Cessation: the Debate Over E-Cigarettes," 7 Feb. 2018
So, by measuring how many of these dark dust particles Cassini caught, scientists could determine how old the rings are.

— National Geographic, "Ringless Saturn? The Planet's Famous Feature May Be Surprisingly Young.," 8 Jan. 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'particle.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Origin and Etymology of particle

Middle English, from Latin particula, from diminutive of part-, pars

NEW! Time Traveler

First Known Use: 14th century

in the meaning defined at sense 1a

See Words from the same year

particle Synonyms

Synonyms

ace, bit, crumb, dab, dram, driblet, glimmer, hint, lick, little, mite, nip, ounce, peanuts, ray, scintilla, scruple, shade, shadow, shred, smack, smidgen (also smidgeon), snap, spark, spatter, speck, splash, spot, sprinkling, strain, streak, suspicion, tad, touch, trace;

Near Antonyms

abundance, barrel, boatload, bucket, bundle, bushel, deal, fistful, gobs, heaps, loads, lot, mass, mess, mountain, much, oodles, passel, peck, pile, plenty, potful, profusion, quantity, raft, reams, scads, stack, wad, wealth;

volume;

chunk, hunk, lump, slab;

atom, dot, fleck, flyspeck, grain, granule, molecule, morsel, mote, nubbin, patch, scrap;

dash, drop, pinch;

part, portion, section;

bite, nibble, taste;

handful, scattering, smatter, smattering;

dose, shot;

Phrases

drop in the bucket;

PARTICLE Defined for English Language Learners

particle

noun

Definition of particle for English Language Learners

: a very small piece of something
: a very small amount of something
physics : any one of the very small parts of matter (such as a molecule, atom, or electron)

PARTICLE Defined for Kids

particle

noun par·ti·cle \ ˈpär-ti-kəl \

Definition of particle for Students

: a very small bit or amount of something

a particle of sand

a particle of sense

Word Root of particle

The Latin word pars, meaning “part,” and its form partis give us the root part. Words from the Latin pars have something to do with a part, section, or portion. To participate is to take part in some activity. Anything partial involves only part of something. A particle is a tiny bit or portion of something. It is easy to see that part itself also comes directly from pars in both form and meaning.