• quark •
Pronunciation: kwahrk or kwôrk • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun, Verb
Meaning: 1. [Mass noun] A soft, low-fat cheese made from skimmed milk. 2. [Noun] Any one of six postulated elementary particles making up protons and neutrons, having an electrical charge one-third or two-thirds of that of an electron. 3. [Intransitive verb] To caw, to croak.
Notes: The possible connection between subatomic particles and low-fat cheese was too great a challenge to resist. How could English support two unrelated nouns as unusual as quark? In fact, the nouns turn out to be unrelated, though one comes from the verb via a bit of serendipity, as the History will show.
In Play: I will not dismay our physicist-readers with a feeble attempt to use the scientific term correctly but will defer to an article of April 23, 1967 in The Observer: "If quarks exist, they would represent a more fundamental building brick of matter than any yet known." The other two meanings are more straightforward: "Farnsworth loved sitting on the back porch in the soft, spring evenings, listing to the frogs quark in the millpond, while feasting on a bowl of fresh, bubbly quark."
Word History: James Joyce would have never dreamed of the impact of his poem in Finnegan's Wake against King Mark of the Tristran legend: “Three quarks for Muster Mark!/Sure he hasn't got much of a bark/And sure any he has it's all beside the mark.” But, according to physicist Murray Gell-Mann, he was strongly influenced by this poem when he chose quark to name this particle (of which he thought only three existed at the time). Joyce was using the noun from the verb quark "to caw, croak". The second noun, quark "low-fat chese", originated in the Slavic word twarog "curds", probably from Sorbian, an West Slavic language (related to Polish) spoken in tiny enclaves throughout eastern Germany.
QUARK
- Dr. Goodword
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Last edited by Dr. Goodword on Fri May 06, 2005 10:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
• The Good Dr. Goodword
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- Grand Panjandrum
- Posts: 1464
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All the cool animals have been used, and even the more "aggressive" fruits, vegetables and spices have generally been taken.
Suzuki have given us ... bizarrely, the Baleno, which suggests a whale.
gailr
who avoids cars with scary names like "probe"
Suzuki have given us ... bizarrely, the Baleno, which suggests a whale.
gailr
who avoids cars with scary names like "probe"
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- Great Grand Panjandrum
- Posts: 2578
- Joined: Tue Feb 15, 2005 3:56 pm
- Location: Crownsville, MD
No, I thought the Twarog was the Balrog's second cousin twice removed . . . but whatever it is it's definitely not Hobbit-forming.Twarog... Isn't that a VW SUV?
-Tim
Regards//Larry
"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."
-- Attributed to Richard Henry Lee
"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."
-- Attributed to Richard Henry Lee
I just finished reading Good Omens. Newton Pulsifier drives a "Wasabi",
-gailr...issued its voice-synthesized warings in a series of exquisite and perfectly-phrased haiku, each one original and apt...
Late frost burns the bloom
Would a fool not let the belt
restrain the body?
The cherry blossom
Tumbles from the highest tree.
One needs more petrol.
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- Great Grand Panjandrum
- Posts: 2578
- Joined: Tue Feb 15, 2005 3:56 pm
- Location: Crownsville, MD
Must be one hot little car . . .I just finished reading Good Omens. Newton Pulsifier drives a "Wasabi", . . .
-gailr
Regards//Larry
"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."
-- Attributed to Richard Henry Lee
"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."
-- Attributed to Richard Henry Lee
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