The word for today is…
quark (noun)
: any of several elementary particles that are postulated to come in pairs (as in the up and down varieties) of similar mass with one member having a charge of +²/₃ and the other a charge of −¹/₃ and are held to make up hadrons
Source : Merriam -Webster
Etymology : If you were a physics major, chances are that James Joyce didn’t make it onto your syllabus. While literature majors are likely more familiar with his work, Joyce has a surprising tie to physics. In the early 1960s, American physicist Murray Gell-Man came up with the word quork, which he used to refer to his concept of an elementary particle smaller than a proton or neutron (by his own account he was in the habit of using names like “squeak” and “squork” for peculiar objects). He later settled on the spelling quark after reading a line from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake: “Three quarks for Muster Mark! / Sure he has not got much of a bark / And sure any he has it’s all beside the mark.” The name stuck and has been used by physicists ever since.
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