# Particle Physics, Joyce, and Cheese: The Word Quark **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 23, 2004, 10:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/particle-physics-joyce-and-cheese-the-word-quark/270752 "2004-10-23T10:06:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2004, 10:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/particle-physics-joyce-and-cheese-the-word-quark/270752/1 "2004-10-23T10:06:14Z")
Everybody knows the story of how physicist Murray Gell-Mann borrowed the term “quark” for an elementary particle from James Joyce’s novel _Finnegan’s Wake_. But I’ve just heard that Joyce, writing the novel (partly) in Zurich, probably picked up the term from the name of a fresh white cheese/yogurt substance common in Germanic countries, known in Germany and the Netherlands as “kwark” but spelled “quark” in Switzerland. Anybody have the Straight Dope on this? Were they indeed selling quark in Zurich stores in the twenties and thirties while Joyce was writing _Finnegan’s Wake_? Has anybody speculated on Joyce’s source for “quark”? ---
**Author:** ![Schnitte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/schnitte/32/9033_2.png) [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2004, 10:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/particle-physics-joyce-and-cheese-the-word-quark/270752/2 "2004-10-23T10:35:17Z")
[QUOTE=Kimstu] Were they indeed selling quark in Zurich stores in the twenties and thirties while Joyce was writing _Finnegan’s Wake_ [QUOTE] I’m pretty confident they were. Quark (I think it’s spelt this way everywhere in the German speaking countries, with “Topfen” being the Austrian term for this substance) is a common kind of curd used in many dishes, dessers, etc. It’s not a brand but simply the name for this dairy product. Whether this is where Joyce got the word from, I don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![Celyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9dc877/32.png) [@Celyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Celyn)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2004, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/particle-physics-joyce-and-cheese-the-word-quark/270752/3 "2004-10-23T12:48:40Z")
Ooh - I’d like it if it _did_ turn out to be derived from the cheese, rather than the particle thingy. That’s simply because when a friend mentioned quarks, I of course first thought of the German soft cheese. Friend was trying to tell me (dunno why, 'cos I know absolutely no physics) all about quarks, and said, “no, do shut up about cheese, nothing to do with cheese, it is actually from James Joyce”. Well, I was very happy and amused that the physicists took the word from Joyce, but I’d be even more amused if the word turned out to have come from cheese all along, which _would_ make complete sense, really. Um, that is “making sense” in a sort of Joycean way. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Mathochist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@Mathochist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mathochist)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2004, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/particle-physics-joyce-and-cheese-the-word-quark/270752/4 "2004-10-23T15:04:40Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Anybody have the Straight Dope on this? Were they indeed selling quark in Zurich stores in the twenties and thirties while Joyce was writing _Finnegan’s Wake_? Has anybody speculated on Joyce’s source for “quark”? I’d be surprised if he didn’t have the cheese in mind. However, this shouldn’t be taken to say that the word in that place “means” the cheese. If you’ve “read” _Finnegans Wake_ (no apostrophe, btw) – and anyone who has seriously attempted it knows why I use the Derrida quotes – you’ll see that almost no word has a single reading. I wasn’t aware of the cheese, but I can see that meaning being used in another reading of the lines in question. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2004, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/particle-physics-joyce-and-cheese-the-word-quark/270752/5 "2004-10-23T16:16:47Z")
Here’s the original passage, from the very beginning of Book 2, Chapter 4: > [@](#): > > — 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 O, Wreneagle Almighty, wouldn’t un be a sky of a lark > To see that old buzzard whooping about for uns shirt in the dark > And he hunting round for uns speckled trousers around by Palmer- > stown Park? > Hohohoho, moulty Mark! > You’re the rummest old rooster ever flopped out of a Noah’s ark > And you think you’re cock of the wark. > Fowls, up! Tristy’s the spry young spark > That’ll tread her and wed her and bed her and red her > Without ever winking the tail of a feather > And that’s how that chap’s going to make his money and mark! > Overhoved, shrillgleescreaming. That song sang seaswans. > The winging ones. Seahawk, seagull, curlew and plover, kestrel > and capercallzie. All the birds of the sea they trolled out rightbold > when they smacked the big kuss of Trustan with Usolde. The “quarks” in context are the cries of the seabird, pronounced so that the word rhymes with Mark. As seen in the next line, the quarks are a variation on bark as a sound an animal makes. But I’ve also read that quark is a pun on quart, as in a pub order: give Mister Mark three quarts. This comes from the ending of Chapter 3: > [@](#): > > grogging suburbanites, such as it was, fall and fall about, to the > brindishing of his charmed life, as toastified by his cheeriubi- > cundenances,no matter whether it was chateaubottled Guiness’s > or Phoenix brewery stout it was or John Jameson and Sons or > Roob Coccola or, for the matter of that, O’Connell’s famous old > Dublin ale that he wanted like hell, more that halibut oil or > jesuits tea, as a fall back, of several different quantities and quali- > ties amounting in all to, I should say, considerably more than the > better part of a gill or naggin of imperial dry and liquid measure I haven’t studied Joyce so I don’t want to speculate too much. He may have picked up the sound of the word from its local use as a cheese. But it’s highly unlikely that, as used, he meant it to refer to the cheese. ---
**Author:** ![Mathochist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@Mathochist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mathochist)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2004, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/particle-physics-joyce-and-cheese-the-word-quark/270752/6 "2004-10-23T16:32:13Z")
> [@Exapno Mapcase](#): > > As seen in the next line, the quarks are a variation on bark as a sound an animal makes. But I’ve also read that quark is a pun on quart, as in a pub order: give Mister Mark three quarts. This comes from the ending of Chapter 3: > > I haven’t studied Joyce so I don’t want to speculate too much. He may have picked up the sound of the word from its local use as a cheese. But it’s highly unlikely that, as used, he meant it to refer to the cheese. What you’re missing is that it’s to be “read” _both_ as a misspelling of “quark” and as an onomatopœia for a gull’s cry. The whole book’s a dream, so nothing in it has any one fixed interpretation. For another clear example: > [@](#): > > riverrun past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs Here I want to focus on “commodius”. It can be read either as a misspelling of “commodious” (large, roomy) or as a construction off of “commode”, either from the shape (rounded) or from the contents (the river in question is either literally or metaphorically polluted). The simple truth is that Joyce intended all these readings, along with whatever the reader could come up with. It’s a dream, subject to interpretation by the dreamer. Joyce may or may not have _intended_ the relation to a certain sort of cheese, but by the structure of the book itself it doesn’t matter at all what Joyce intended. What matters is whether the reader interprets the line in the light of cheese or not. ---
**Author:** ![Mathochist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@Mathochist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mathochist)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2004, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/particle-physics-joyce-and-cheese-the-word-quark/270752/7 "2004-10-23T16:34:27Z")
Oh, and another thing: Why should any one line necessarily be interpreted in the contextual light of its neighboring lines? Just “because that’s the way books work” won’t cut it here. ---
**Author:** ![Alan\_Smithee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/2acd7d/32.png) [@Alan\_Smithee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alan_Smithee)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2004, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/particle-physics-joyce-and-cheese-the-word-quark/270752/8 "2004-10-23T17:55:39Z")
I’ve never read any Joyce (I’ve missed out, it seems), but I’ve read enough about Joyce (including here on the SDMB) to guess that the answer to any question about FW phrased in form “Why should X be interpreted Y-ly?” is “Because I can.” ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2004, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/particle-physics-joyce-and-cheese-the-word-quark/270752/9 "2004-10-23T21:42:29Z")
> [@Mathochist](#): > > What you’re missing is that it’s to be “read” _both_ as a misspelling of “quark” and as an onomatopœia for a gull’s cry. Of course I said it was both. How could you interpret what I wrote otherwise? > [@](#): > > Joyce may or may not have intended the relation to a certain sort of cheese, but by the structure of the book itself it doesn’t matter at all what Joyce intended. What matters is whether the reader interprets the line in the light of cheese or not. Now I see how. This can be the basis for a very long literary argument, but Joyce himself would answer it with a swift kick in the nuts. He knew exactly what he meant, and he wanted you (the reader) to tease out his meaning. He didn’t spend all those years on the book for readers to interpret it as they please. And if the context doesn’t provide illumination for interpretation, then why bother reading the words in any sort of order? Why bother writing the words in any sort of order? Context is everything. I’ve said it before, and it applies to Joyce every bit as much. ---
**Author:** ![Mathochist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@Mathochist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mathochist)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2004, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/particle-physics-joyce-and-cheese-the-word-quark/270752/10 "2004-10-24T04:51:59Z")
> [@Exapno Mapcase](#): > > This can be the basis for a very long literary argument, but Joyce himself would answer it with a swift kick in the nuts. He knew exactly what he meant, and he wanted you (the reader) to tease out his meaning. He didn’t spend all those years on the book for readers to interpret it as they please. Rubbish. Joyce wrote _Ulysses_ as his idea of the pinnacle of the novel form and followed it with _Finnegans Wake_ as its death knell – its “wake”, if you will. (tangent: not that he meant literature to end there, as Tim Finnegan lived on after his own wake) Joyce didn’t intend any one reading, nor any seventy readings as “proper”. It’s pure text, the stream of unconsciousness, a coma dream. It has as much meaning inherent as any dream does. Even though there are strains he knew he was putting in when he did so, I can’t believe he’d declare any personal reading invalid. He even says as much in the text itself. > [@](#): > > and Gutenmorg with his cromagnom charter, tintingfast and great primer must once for omniboss step rubrickredd out of the wordpress else is there no virtue more in alcohoran. For that (the rapt one warns) is what papyr is meed of, made of, hides and hints and misses in prints. Till ye finally (though not endlike) meet with the acquaintance of Mister Typus, Mistress Tope and all the little typtopies. Fillstup. So you need hardly spell me how every word will be bound over to carry three score and ten toptypsical reading throughout the book of Doublends Jined (may his forehead be darkened with mud who would sunder!) till Daleth, mahomahouma, who oped it closeth thereof the. Dor. > [@](#): > > And if the context doesn’t provide illumination for interpretation, then why bother reading the words in any sort of order? Why bother writing the words in any sort of order? > > Context is everything. I’ve said it before, and it applies to Joyce every bit as much. You’re free to read _Finnegans Wake_ White-King style, of course. There’s a lot to be gleaned from that pass. First, though, can you tell me where the beginning properly is? The book is one of (as I quoted earlier) “double-ends joined”, so the beginning and end of the published text are the end and the beginning of a broken sentence. Where’s the “real” beginning? Is this anything more than an arbitrary choice? Is the text inherently circular – needing to be cut somewhere to be published – which Joyce highlighted by cutting it in a very odd spot? I don’t think you can regard the notion of context in _Finnegans Wake_ the same as you would in a “normal” text. There are places where the surface context jumps abruptly. There are places where one section of text is both the end of one context and the beginning of another, much like the coded sections for different genes in a DNA plasmid can sometimes overlap. Do I mean that Joyce structured his work like DNA, which wouldn’t be discovered for decades yet? Of course not, but that isn’t to say it’s not a valid reading. I daresay Joyce would have been extremely pleased with himself to have “predicted” such a thing. Further (and more to the “quark” point), context in _Finnegans Wake_ is fractal (another prescience). The appropriate context is far from unique at most points, with different contexts resolving themselves to the microscope of the reader’s mind depending on what scale is being considered. How does a given word support the context of the entire text? Of a given book? Of a section? Of a page? A paragraph? A sentence? Line? Itself? Why should these _a priori_ have anything to do with each other? Rubbish. ---
**Author:** ![Alan\_Smithee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/2acd7d/32.png) [@Alan\_Smithee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alan_Smithee)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2004, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/particle-physics-joyce-and-cheese-the-word-quark/270752/11 "2004-10-24T07:11:01Z")
A slight hijack, but I don’t really see the tread going anywhere else WRT the OP: How does one read Joyce? I don’t plan to start any time soon, but I definitely want to try it some time (after grad school, I’m sure). I’m pretty darn smart and well-educated to boot, but there’s no way I could pick out one tenth of the meanings in those words, especially with all the archaicisms, misspellings, references to obscure fields of knowledge, etc. It would surely be impossible to annotate thoroughly, and would make reading it a drudgery. Do I have to wait for a college class to read it and audit? Or is this one of the few things in life I’m genuinely not smart enough to do (as opposed to not talented, skilled, disciplined, trained, or interested enough) ---
**Author:** ![Mathochist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@Mathochist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mathochist)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2004, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/particle-physics-joyce-and-cheese-the-word-quark/270752/12 "2004-10-24T13:03:10Z")
> [@Alan Smithee](#): > > How does one read Joyce? Most of his work, like any other author, White-King style. “Begin at the beginning, keep going until you get to the end, then stop.” _Finnegans Wake_ is really much different than anything else. What I’d advise is to read his works in the order he published them. Start with _Dubliners_, a collection of short stories, followed by _Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_. _Ulysses_ is next, capped off by _Finnegans Wake_. Each work actually does make reference to the previous ones, and they get progressively more experimental as you go along. I’d also advise trying to find a decent critical edition of each one that fits your style of thought. > [@](#): > > Or is this one of the few things in life I’m genuinely not smart enough to do? If anything you might be too smart. The graduate students I know who just _can’t_ grok Joyce are generally the ones who can’t forget everything they know about “reading”. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2004, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/particle-physics-joyce-and-cheese-the-word-quark/270752/13 "2004-10-24T13:13:28Z")
> [@Exapno Mapcase](#): > > But I’ve also read that quark is a pun on quart, as in a pub order: give Mister Mark three quarts. Was a quart used as a pub measure in Dublin at the time? While it certainly existed as an imperial measure in Ireland, I’ve never read of it in the context of pubs, nor seen antique quart glasses or bottles or the like, and it’s certainly not used today. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2004, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/particle-physics-joyce-and-cheese-the-word-quark/270752/14 "2004-10-24T16:41:35Z")
We’re well past the realm of GQ and into the world of “text” - not quite the same thing as literature, BTW, as it can apply to canvas (a stand-in for all forms of art, a poor word in this context - oops), film, music, architecture or any other medium. Ever since modernism planted its flat feet on the artistic world, and not just in the novel, there have been storms and schools of critics battling over the proper way to interpret text. A large part of the argument has been over the emphasis that must be given to the artist’s “intent” and how much to give to what the viewer brings to the text. As I say, firmly, I am of the context is everything school. **Mathochist** is wrong again in bringing his reading to my intent. Context is not the same thing as divining the artist’s intent. True art can constantly be reinterpreted, even reinvented, by reimaging it in the context of the viewer’s world. But context is very much against ignoring the artist, the intent, the contemporary history. Joyce’s world is one in which the context is of the most supreme importance, perhaps the most spectacular example of deliberately constricting the parameters in an attempt to make the narrow universal. Joyce knew what he was doing. **Mathochist** appears to imply that Joyce flung stream-of-consciousness words on the page that were left for the viewer to make sense of. Rubbish. Joyce tinkered with the manuscript through every phase of the publishing process, and not just because of the printers’ typos. Each invented word/pun/association meant something to him. You don’t read Finnegan’s Wake from beginning to end in one pass, full stop, never go back. The notion is ludicrous. Neither can you take individual sentences and detach them from the book and invent a reading for them. Here’s an analogy that may be to **Mathochist’s** heart. Think of Joyce the way you would approach one of those 1200-page proofs that have teams of mathematicians pouring over for years in order to validate. Can you go through one from beginning to end? Yes. Perhaps one must at some time. Should you go back and forth and test and compare and tease out the relationships? Yes. One must. Can you pull an equation out of the middle and say what its meaning is without regard to the context from which it arose? No. Why should any of these equations a priori have anything to do with each other? Because if not, then the whole is a colossal waste of time. You don’t believe that about math and you don’t believe that about Joyce. So stop making that the core of your argument. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2004, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/particle-physics-joyce-and-cheese-the-word-quark/270752/15 "2004-10-24T17:28:42Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Anybody have the Straight Dope on this? Were they indeed selling quark in Zurich stores in the twenties and thirties while Joyce was writing _Finnegan’s Wake_? Has anybody speculated on Joyce’s source for “quark”? To answer part of your OP, yes, they were selling/using “quark” the cheese in Europe well-before the 20’s-30’s. [Barry Popik](http://www.barrypopik.com/), the brilliant finder of words, found a cite from a 1903 book published in the US that was devoted to describing menu terms for an English speaker who might encounter a “foreign” word on a menu. _Quark_ was described thusly: > [@](#): > > Pg. 75: Quark (_German_). A German cheese, similar to curd cheese. The > French “fromage mou.” > (OED has 1931–ed.) So, the term was out there very early. My link to Barry’s website won’t show you where I obtained the info. It was from one of his posts to the American Dialect Society Mailing List. ---
**Author:** ![Mathochist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@Mathochist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mathochist)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2004, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/particle-physics-joyce-and-cheese-the-word-quark/270752/16 "2004-10-25T00:45:56Z")
> [@Exapno Mapcase](#): > > Why should any of these equations a priori have anything to do with each other? Because if not, then the whole is a colossal waste of time. You don’t believe that about math and you don’t believe that about Joyce. So stop making that the core of your argument. I don’t believe it about Joyce. I believe it about _Finnegans Wake_ (as I said before, not “Finnegan’s”). Further, it’s not a waste of time at all for exactly the reasons I stated before (here slightly rephrased): _Ulysses_ is the death knell of the classical novel, and _Finnegans Wake_ is the resurrection of the modern “novel”. > [@](#): > > Joyce’s world is one in which the context is of the most supreme importance, perhaps the most spectacular example of deliberately constricting the parameters in an attempt to make the narrow universal. Joyce knew what he was doing. **Mathochist** appears to imply that Joyce flung stream-of-consciousness words on the page that were left for the viewer to make sense of. Rubbish. Joyce tinkered with the manuscript through every phase of the publishing process, and not just because of the printers’ typos. Each invented word/pun/association meant something to him. Of course he did. I never claimed to deny this. Joyce carefully crafted dozens of lines of meaning through his final tapestry, but he also said (rather clearly, I think, in that passage I quoted before) that no reading should be discounted whether or not he intended it. > [@](#): > > Here’s an analogy that may be to **Mathochist’s** heart. Think of Joyce the way you would approach one of those 1200-page proofs that have teams of mathematicians pouring over for years in order to validate. Can you go through one from beginning to end? Yes. Perhaps one must at some time. Should you go back and forth and test and compare and tease out the relationships? Yes. One must. Can you pull an equation out of the middle and say what its meaning is without regard to the context from which it arose? No. First of all, I don’t consider _Finnegans Wake_ to be representative. It was carefully crafted to be as ambiguous as it is. Further, the analogy is weak. Mathematics thrives on strict rigor while literature has no such requirement. That said, how many major theorems in mathematics started life as lemmas: mere struts in another proof that have been repurposed and refashioned to serve many more uses _once considered in and of themselves_, outside the context of the original theorem. If context were as total (and not scalable) in mathematics as \*_Exapno Macapse_ (as long as we’re referring to each other in oratorical style) would suggest the Snake lemma would never have left the realm of modules over a ring, for example. The progress of mathematics essentially involves taking a part of a constructed ediface, trying to determine what it “really” is (outside the context of its application), and building another field around this stripped-down piece. For a more basic example, how does the notion of a tangent vector in differential geometry suggest itself when the preexisting field (analysis on **R** [sup]n[/sup]) identifies the tangent spaces at all points with the base space itself? By considering the notion of a vector _as abstracted from_ its use in analysis on **R** [sup]n[/sup]. And finally, to poke my finger in the barrel of this shotgun, the original motivation of string theory was a man happening across a function in a book (one developed over an esoteric point in centuries-old analysis) which happened to have nice properties. Should that function only be considered in the “context” in which it originally arose? I should hope **Exapno Macapse** would save himself one of his own favorite topics from the dustbin of history. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2004, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/particle-physics-joyce-and-cheese-the-word-quark/270752/17 "2004-10-25T01:59:12Z")
It is of course properly _Finnegans Wake_ with no apostrophe. And Joyce meant something by leaving it out. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2013, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/particle-physics-joyce-and-cheese-the-word-quark/270752/18 "2013-07-20T17:18:22Z")
This word came up not too long ago in [Words coined by famous people](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=16292119), and I’m happy I now find this more focused discussion. At the end: Quark [etym]: Quack + squawk + muster + master + Mark All the other comments on the word were mine, including my self-correction, which I submit in the spoiler below. For good measure, the final post I copy over here is more speculative–a poster mentioned the quark/dairy thing (um, the OP here :))–which is along the lines of a few other posts I see here. Dates and post numbers can be found in the source thread. [spoiler] #4 > [@Words coined by famous people](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-coined-by-famous-people/658389/4): > > Murray Gell-Mann didn’t invent “quark,” Joyce did (in a new meaning itself), but Gell-Mann made the thing/word thing. > > The word is in the opening sentence of a poetic introduction opening Book II, Chapter IV (Viking Ed, 384). It is Joyce’s redefinition, to his ear, of the sound of seabirds with an adaptation of “squawk.” The birds circle in the air gossiping about what they see. > > The chapter works with the myth of Tristan and Isolde. Tristan has been mustered by his master King Mark to fetch Isolde to be his bride. > > — Three quarks for Muster Mark! > > After the poem is finished, the prose begins with the same picture: > > Overhoved, shrillgleescreaming. That song sang seaswans. > The winging ones. Seahawk, seagull, curlew and plover, kestrel > and capercallzie. All the birds of the sea they trolled out rightbold > when they smacked the big kuss of Trustan with Usolde. > > It’s nice that “quark” echoes the orthography of both “muster” and “Mark.” > The full passage (Tristan bags her for himself): > > ``` > — 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 O, Wreneagle Almighty, wouldn't un be a sky of a lark > To see that old buzzard whooping about for uns shirt in the dark > And he hunting round for uns speckled trousers around by Palmer- > stown Park? > Hohohoho, moulty Mark! > You're the rummest old rooster ever flopped out of a Noah's ark > And you think you're cock of the wark. > Fowls, up! Tristy's the spry young spark > That'll tread her and wed her and bed her and red her > Without ever winking the tail of a feather > And that's how that chap's going to make his money and mark! > > ``` * * * > [@Words coined by famous people](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-coined-by-famous-people/658389/8): > > It occurs to me that the source of the word “quark,” when explained–mentioning the “squawk” part–is cited in nearly every lay introduction to physics and has captured the public ear like few other etymologies. > > The etymology of “quark,” this permanent member of the lexicon (relatively rare in contemporary neologisms) can _only_ be elucidated using the full sentence of Joyce. I have never seen the correct etymology outside Joyce studies. Or happily figured out by non-published readers, of course. * * * [snip] I forgot that “quark” starts off with–and the reason for the “q”–is “quack” as we’ll as “squawk.” The “ua” is thus both standard English orthography as well as a nod to the merger of the “u” in “mustering” the “a” in “Mark.” Thus, finally Quark [etym]: Quack + squawk + muster + master + Mark There. * * * > [@Words coined by famous people](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-coined-by-famous-people/658389/11): > > _Quark_ is a German word, meaning milk curds. I don’t know if either Joyce or Gell-Mann knew this, bit I would not be surprised if they did. They were both language buffs. > [@Words coined by famous people](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-coined-by-famous-people/658389/13): > > Yes, of course. That’s why I opened the post saying that Joyce invented the word “with a new meaning itself.”\* > > The milk product has no bearing on the etymology, although in the spirit of all’s fair in Wake glosses, have at it if you think you can come up with one. > > What’s interesting is that the near-super human fluidity with which Joyce plays with words, in so many languages, is that people assume not only that he was aware of, but employed all possible meanings of every word and phrase and their sound association in creation. > > Of course, that very fluidity is what allows new insight and pleasure in exploring Joyce’s meaning and the reader’s creative response to it–such as what you may come up with “quark,” as I suggested above. > > In fact, a game Wakeans play (I forget what it has been dubbed) is to find, and make bullshit glosses, on words that didn’t exist nohow nowhere when the Wake was written. For example, the word “Emalia” appears, usually glossed as a play on Emilia, the character in _Othello_ (why the name is changed is not important here). But it has joined the list of pre-figurations by Joyce. > > I have often thought about, and may publish yet, the idea in literature criticism the idea of Joyce as the Hebrew God of creation. Case in point: a hoary and holy exegetical practice in Judaism is the freedom to connect every and any word in the Bible to each other. Why? Since the Torah is from God, is perfect, meaning among other things no word would be used by Him in it if something could not be gleaned from them. This exegetical freedom includes using sound changes (easy enough when you consider that the Torah, like modern Hebrew, has precious few vowels)–from it’s first name of “Adam” (“earth/dirt”) as well as and puns, a practice Rabbi Jesus was fond of, “Petrus” (“stone”). (In the case of Petrus Jesus made the connection clear.) > > At base is that God’s literate/literal framework of existence is of profound significance: the Book–written text–is the vehicle for the very existence of God’s created reality, or of God himself (later specifically conflated with nonliteracy with Christians’ conception of Logos). > > For good reason the idea of “Midrash as literature” flourished in the 1980s as French lit crit had its fluorescence. Derrida has a (typically irresponsible) essay on Joyce and the Torah. (Joyce is the happy hunting ground for post-modern crit “all meanings are good cuz I say so.”) > \*This reply, by using a cite quote, makes it sound more aggressive/defensive than it is. Not meant, just habit of scholarly reply. Which indeed often is aggressive/defensive. 🙂 [/spoiler] ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2013, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/particle-physics-joyce-and-cheese-the-word-quark/270752/19 "2013-07-20T17:36:52Z")
Joyce wrote _Finnegan’s Wake_ purely as a joke, to laugh at all of the people who spend so much time trying to find Deep Meaning in nonsense. And did Cafe Society exist when this thread first lived? ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2013, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/particle-physics-joyce-and-cheese-the-word-quark/270752/20 "2013-07-20T17:50:33Z")
Since this discussion is more about Joyce than the origin of the word, let’s move this to Cafe Society. Colibri General Questions Moderator [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/particle-physics-joyce-and-cheese-the-word-quark/270752.md?page=2)