English▸ noun Physics any of a number of subatomic particles carrying a fractional electric charge, postulated as building blocks of the hadrons. Quarks have not been directly observed but theoretical predictions based on their existence have been confirmed experimentally.
– ORIGIN 1960s: a word invented by Murray Gell-Man (see Gell-Mann, Murray). Originally quork, the term was changed by association with the line ‘Three quarks for Muster Mark’ in Joyce's Finnegans Wake (1939).