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, 19 Mar. 2026
The previous heavy baryon was discovered in 2017, also at LHCb, and consists of two charm quarks and an up quark.
—Clara Moskowitz, Scientific American, 17 Mar. 2026
The gravitational pressure could be so extreme as to crush neutrons into their building blocks, which are fundamental particles called quarks and the gluons that ordinarily bind quarks together to form protons and neutrons.
—Keith Cooper, Space.com, 15 Mar. 2026
Simply mix 250g of low-fat quark (which contains around 20g of protein) with 40g of ground oats, half a banana as a natural binding agent and a dash of milk.
—Desireé Oostland, Vogue, 4 Mar. 2026
See All Example Sentences for quark
Cite this Entry
“Quark.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quark. Accessed 25 Mar. 2026.
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