abosse@reed.UUCP ( ) (05/03/91)
In article <18873@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> ikoutsel@sdcc6.ucsd.edu (Ioannis Koutselas) writes: > MOreover, I have heard that quark is not something that Gell_man > has used for the particle, but rather that he has taken the word > from Jame's Joyce books or whatever. I don't think that Joyce is > mentioned if you look at the word quark. That is correct. Its from Finnegan's Wake. I can't remember the reference exactly, but it goes something like this, "Three quarks for Mister < ? >" (now I feel embarrassed..) Well, at any rate, you're quite right about the Joyce reference as the source for Gell (the word was coined, according to Webster's, in 1929, a few years after FW was published. Arno Bosse
matthews@ecfa.jesnet.jsc.nasa.gov (Michael C. Matthews) (05/05/91)
In article <16374@reed.UUCP> abosse@reed.UUCP ( ) writes: >In article <18873@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> ikoutsel@sdcc6.ucsd.edu (Ioannis Koutselas) >writes: > >> MOreover, I have heard that quark is not something that Gell_man >> has used for the particle, but rather that he has taken the word >> from Jame's Joyce books or whatever. I don't think that Joyce is >> mentioned if you look at the word quark. > >That is correct. Its from Finnegan's Wake. I can't remember the reference >exactly, but it goes something like this, "Three quarks for Mister < ? >" (now Marks >I feel embarrassed..) Well, at any rate, you're quite right about the Joyce >reference as the source for Gell (the word was coined, according to Webster's, in 1929, >a few years after FW was published. > >Arno Bosse Uh... well... actually Digital Webster says that the *word* was coined in 1964. It was Murray Gell-Mann who was "coined" in 1929... :-) To wit: quark \[pronunciation deleted to avoid blowing ASCII's mind]\ n [coined by Murray Gell-Mann b1929 Am. physicist] (1964) : a hypothetical particle that carries a fractional electric charge, is thought to come in several types (as up, down, strange, charmed, and bottom), and is held to be a constituent of hadrons Also, this from the Preface (Explanatory Notes -- Dates): ...the date given is always for the first recorded use of the first entered sense and not necessarily of the word: many words, especially those with long histories, have obsolete, archaic, or uncommon senses that are not entered in this dictionary, and such senses have been excluded from consideration in determining the date... ObNeXT: I'm intensely curious about how some of the people out there have managed to legally hang on to their '030 boards after getting their '040 boards. I wanted to do this, but Bland made me sign some NeXT paperwork swearing that I would return the 030 before they would give me the 040. What gives? -- Mike Matthews Lockheed Engineering & Sciences Company, Houston matthews@asd2.jsc.nasa.gov matthews@ecfa.jsc.nasa.gov (if they ever fix the bloody sendmail.cf)