quark
The origin and history of quark.
Etymology
The physics sense was coined in 1963 by physicist Murray Gell-Mann, who later linked the spelling to a nonsense line in James Joyce's novel Finnegans Wake. The cheese sense comes separately from German Quark.
Class of 1963
quark first entered the language around 1963. Other words from the same year:
See the full Class of 1963 →