# Particle Physics, Joyce, and Cheese: The Word Quark

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/particle-physics-joyce-and-cheese-the-word-quark/270752>\
**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:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\
**Post date:** [July 20, 2013, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/particle-physics-joyce-and-cheese-the-word-quark/270752/21 "2013-07-20T19:17:23Z")

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Just like the [particles](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavour_%28particle_physics%29), quark [also](http://www.packagingeurope.com/images/news/quark.jpg) [comes in](http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1025/1231343599_b502b7a562_o.jpg) [various](http://www.thenibble.com/reviews/main/cheese/cheese2/whey/images/vermont-quark-280_000.jpg) [flavors](http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/uncyclopedia/images/1/1f/Vanilla_strawberry_quark.jpg).

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**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 21, 2013, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/particle-physics-joyce-and-cheese-the-word-quark/270752/22 "2013-07-21T05:50:26Z")

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> [@Chronos](#):
>
> 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?

One of Joyce’s everpresent working force in the Wake is, as he wrote there, “the abnihilisation of the etym.”

Ironically enough a shared interest with yours, I believe.

Also, the thread was just fine originally in GQ.

Oh, and knock yourself out, if you want to, with this, which is nonsense as science but has but good excerpts and glosses:

[The Joyce of Science: New Physics in Finnegans Wake.](http://duszenko.northern.edu/joyce/index.html)

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**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\
**Post date:** [July 22, 2013, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/particle-physics-joyce-and-cheese-the-word-quark/270752/23 "2013-07-22T00:29:18Z")

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Gell-Mann himself says he took the term from Joyce. Originally, there were only three known quarks (top, bottom, and strange, I think), so why wonder if it came from cheese. Now Joyce may have gotten it from cheese. Certainly in 1967 when I spent 6 months there they were selling a soft curd cheese and calling it quark. You can buy a soft curd cheese in Montreal called quark (as my wife did this morning).

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