# quark
## English
### Etymology 1

Coined by American physicist Murray Gell-Mann in 1963. The literary connection to James Joyce's Finnegans Wake was asserted later.

#### Pronunciation

* (Received Pronunciation) enPR: kwôk, IPA: /kwɔːk/; enPR: kwäk, IPA: /kwɑːk/
* Audio (Southern England):(file)
* Audio (Southern England):(file)
* (General American) enPR: kwôrk, IPA: /kwɔɹk/; enPR: kwärk, IPA: /kwɑɹk/
* Rhymes: -ɔː(ɹ)k, -ɑː(ɹ)k

#### Noun

quark (plural quarks)
* (physics) In the Standard Model, an elementary subatomic particle that forms matter. They combine to form hadrons, such as protons and neutrons.
    Synonym: (obsolete) ace
** 2012 March-April, Jeremy Bernstein, “A Palette of Particles”, in American Scientist‎, volume 100, number 2, page 146:There were also particles no one had predicted that just appeared. Five of them […, i]n order of increasing modernity, […] are the neutrino, the pi meson, the antiproton, the quark and the Higgs boson.
* (computing, X Window System) An integer that uniquely identifies a text string.
** 2012, Keith D. Gregory, Programming with Motif, page 453:Two functions are provided to convert between strings and quarks: XrmStringToQuark and XrmQuarkToString […]
* (slang, X Window System) A nonsense, trivial text string.

##### Hyponyms

* anti-beauty quark
* anti-bottom quark
* anti-charm quark
* anti-down quark
* anti-strange quark
* anti-top quark
* anti-up quark
* beauty quark
* bottom quark
* charm quark
* down quark
* strange quark
* top quark
* truth quark
* up quark

##### Derived terms

* antiquark
* biquark
* charmed quark
* diquark
* hexaquark
* interquark
* multiquark
* pentaquark
* prequark
* quagma
* quark-antiquark
* quark-gluon plasma
* quarkless
* quark matter
* quark model
* quark nova
* quark nugget
* quarkonic
* quarkonium
* quark star
* quark theory
* quarkyonic
* quink
* sea quark
* squark
* strange quark matter
* strange quark star
* subquark
* techniquark
* tetraquark
* triquark

##### Translations
### Etymology 2

Borrowed from German Quark, from late Middle High German twarc, from a West Slavic language (compare Polish twaróg), from Proto-Slavic *tvarogъ. Doublet of tvorog.

#### Noun

quark (uncountable)
* A soft creamy cheese, eaten throughout northern, central, eastern, and southeastern Europe, as well as the Low Countries.

##### Translations
### Etymology 3

Onomatopoeic, from the sound of the squawk.

#### Noun

quark (plural quarks)
* (Falkland Islands, informal) The black-crowned night heron, Nycticorax nycticorax.

##### Translations
### See also

* hadron
* meson

### Further reading

* quark on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
* quark (dairy product) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
* quark (disambiguation) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

### References

* ↑ James Gleick (1993) Genius: Richard Feynman and Modern Physics:Gell-Mann won the linguistic battle once again: his choice, a croaking nonsense word, was "quark". (After the fact, he was able to tack on a literary antecedent when he found the phrase "Three quarks for Muster Mark" in Finnegans Wake, but the physicists quark was pronounced from the beginning to rhyme with "cork".)

## Basque
### Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from English quark.

### Pronunciation

* IPA: /kwark/ [kwark]
* Rhymes: -ark
* Hyphenation: quark

### Noun

quark inan
* (physics) quark

#### Declension
### Further reading

* “quark”, in Euskaltzaindiaren Hiztegia [Dictionary of the Basque Academy] (in Basque), Euskaltzaindia [Royal Academy of the Basque Language]

## Catalan
### Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from English quark.

### Noun

quark m (plural quarks)
* (physics) quark

## Dutch
### Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from English quark.

### Pronunciation

* Audio:(file)
* Homophone: kwark

### Noun

quark m (plural quarks)
* (physics) quark

## French
### Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from English quark.

### Pronunciation

* IPA: /kwaʁk/
* Audio (Paris):(file)

### Noun

quark m (plural quarks)
* (physics) quark

## Galician
### Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from English quark.

### Noun

quark m (plural quarks)
* (physics) quark

## Italian
### Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from English quark.

### Pronunciation

* IPA: /ˈkwark/
* Rhymes: -ark
* Hyphenation: quàrk

### Noun

quark m (invariable)
* (physics) quark

#### Derived terms

* quarkonio

### Further reading

* quark in Treccani.it – Vocabolario Treccani on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana

## Portuguese
### Pronunciation

* (Brazil) IPA: /ˈkwaʁ.ki/ [ˈkwah.ki]
* (Brazil) IPA: /ˈkwaʁ.ki/ [ˈkwah.ki]
** (São Paulo) IPA: /ˈkwaɾ.ki/
** (Rio de Janeiro) IPA: /ˈkwaʁ.ki/ [ˈkwaχ.ki]
** (Southern Brazil) IPA: /ˈkwaɻ.ke/
* (Portugal) IPA: /ˈkwaɾ.kɨ/

### Etymology 1

Unadapted borrowing from English quark.

#### Noun

quark m (plural quarks)
* (physics) quark (an elementary subatomic particle which forms matter)

### Etymology 2

Borrowed from German Quark.

#### Noun

quark m (plural quarks)
* quark (soft creamy cheese)

### Further reading

* “quark”, in iDicionário Aulete (in Portuguese), Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon Editora Digital, 2008–2025
* “quark”, in Dicio – Dicionário Online de Português (in Portuguese), Porto: 7Graus, 2009–2025
* “quark”, in Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa (in Portuguese), Lisboa: Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, 2001–2025
* “quark”, in Dicionário infopédia da Língua Portuguesa (in Portuguese), Porto: Porto Editora, 2003–2025
* “quark”, in Michaelis Dicionário Brasileiro da Língua Portuguesa (in Portuguese), São Paulo: Editora Melhoramentos, 2015–2025
* “quark”, in Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa (in Portuguese), Lisbon: Priberam, 2008–2025

## Spanish
### Alternative forms

* cuark, cuarc

### Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from English quark.

### Pronunciation

* IPA: /ˈkwaɾk/ [ˈkwaɾk]
* Rhymes: -aɾk
* Syllabification: quark

### Noun

quark m (plural quarks)
* quark
    Hypernyms: fermión, partícula elemental

#### Usage notes

According to Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) prescriptions, unadapted foreign words should be written in italics in a text printed in roman type, and vice versa, and in quotation marks in a manuscript text or when italics are not available. In practice, this RAE prescription is not always followed.

#### Hyponyms

* quarks: quark: quark arriba · quark abajo · quark encantado · quark extraño · quark cima · quark fondo

### Further reading

* “quark”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 2024 December 10