This word came up not too long ago in Words coined by famous people , and I’m happy I now find this more focused discussion.
At the end:
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
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.
It’s nice that “quark” echoes the orthography of both “muster” and “Mark.”
— 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!
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
There.
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.”)
[/spoiler]