quark的词源

英文词源

quark

quark: [20] The term quark was applied to a type of fundamental particle by its discoverer, the American physicist Murray Gell-Mann. He seems first to have used quork, but then he remembered quark, a nonsense word used by James Joyce in Finnegan’s Wake 1939, and he decided to plump for that. It first appeared in print in 1964.

quark (n.)

1964, applied by U.S. physicist Murray Gell-Mann (b.1929), who said in correspondence with the editors of the OED in 1978 that he took it from a word in James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" (1939), but also that the sound of the word was in his head before he encountered the printed form in Joyce. German Quark "curds, rubbish" has been proposed as the ultimate inspiration [Barnhart; Gell-Mann's parents were immigrants from Austria-Hungary]. George Zweig, Gell-Mann's co-proposer of the theory, is said to have preferred the name ace for them.

中文词源

quark：夸克

夸克是一种基本粒子，为构成物质的基本单元。两个上夸克和一个下夸克组成一个质子，两个下夸克和一个上夸克组成一个中子。quark原为一种喜欢上上下下蹦跳的海鸟，为拟声构词，模仿这种海鸟的叫声。发现该物理粒子的美国科学家Murray Gell-Mann希望为其取一个朗朗上口的名字，避免落入俗套（科学界流行从希腊和拉丁语中找词来命名科学术语）。后来在一本小说的打油诗中找到一名”Three quarks for Muster Mark”,向麦克老人三呼夸克。这个词听起来既有穿透力，又较好的契合了这种物质的基本属性，因此以此命名。

该词的英语词源请访问找单词词源英文版：quark 词源，quark 含义。