quark
/kwɑɹk/noun
quark is spelled Q-U-A-R-K: 5 letters and one syllable. It appears 1.1 times per million words in written English, the 27,150th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, quark means “In the Standard Model, one of a number of elementary subatomic particles having fractional electric charge that forms matter. They are theorized not…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of quark is quarks.
How many letters and syllables are in quark?
| Letters | 5: Q-U-A-R-K |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 1.1 times per million words; the 27,150th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
| Rhymes with |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How common is quark?
Quark appears 1.1 times per million words in written English, the 27,150th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce quark?
- UK /kwɑːk/
- US /kwɑɹk/
- /kwɔɹk/
As a noun (“A soft, creamy, unripened cheese made from cow's milk…”): /kwɑːk/, /kvɑːk/, /kwɑɹk/.
As a noun (“The black-crowned night heron (Nycticorax nycticorax)”): /kwɑːk/, /kwɑɹk/.
Quark has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-quark2.wav, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vincent.Xavier.Zell-quark.wav, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Naomi_Persephone_Amethyst_(NaomiAmethyst)-quark.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
What rhymes with quark?
The 12 most written words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as quark from its last stressed vowel (/ɑɹk/):
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of quark
- quarks plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does quark mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
In the Standard Model, one of a number of elementary subatomic particles having fractional electric charge that forms matter. They are theorized not to exist in isolation, but only in combinations in hadrons such as neutrons and protons or in quark–gluon plasmas.
- 2
An integer that uniquely identifies a text string.
- 3
slangA nonsense, trivial text string.
- 4
A soft, creamy, unripened cheese made from cow's milk, originating from and eaten throughout central, northern, eastern, and southeastern Europe, as well as the Low Countries.
- 5
informalThe black-crowned night heron (Nycticorax nycticorax).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Quark in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | quark , caillé, faisselle, fromage blanc, maquée |
| German | Quark , Topfen |
| Portuguese | quark |
| Spanish | quark, cuark , requesón |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does quark come from?
Etymology 1 sense 1 (“subatomic particle”) was coined by the American physicist Murray Gell-Mann (1929–2019) in 1963, apparently an arbitrary word. Subsequently, in a letter dated 27 June 1978 to the editor of the Oxford English Dictionary Supplement, Gell-Mann associated the word with the sentence “Three quarks for Muster Mark!” from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (1939) and indicated that he pronounced the word /kwɔɹk/, reasoning that the sentence referred to a call in a pub for “three quarts”.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).