quark, hypothetical, squawk, bark, barker, scurrilous

"Epigrams can revel in negative or scurrilous utterances, but that’s not a requirement. If anything’s essential, it may be a certain paradoxical irony. And even that’s all the better when it nudges rather than smacks you. Mae West’s quip 'To err is human, but it feels divine' is a resonant smile not a zinger. Is it an epigram? I think so, in the sense that it’s a poem whose author was disciplined enough to intuit that every line but the last should be cut."


Merrill Lynch will pay $7 million as part of a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over the use of squawk boxes, the intercom systems that sit on the desks of traders, brokers and sales people and are commonly used to bark out orders and other internal communications.




In DealBook's latest "Another View" column, David E. Wood of Anderson Kill Wood & Bender contemplates a hypothetical A.I.G. bankruptcy and argues that the conventional wisdom about such a filing -- that the assets of A.I.G.'s insurance units would be beyond the direct reach of creditors -- could be challenged.

Go to Another View from DealBook»

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In fact, experience can not even be recorded unless there is some theory, however crude, that leads to a hypothesis and a system by which to catalog ...

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Rules for detection of special causes and for action on them are not tests of a hypothesis that the system is in a stable state. More on specifications.10 ...

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Some books teach that use of a control chart is test of hypothesis : the process is in control, or it is not. Such errors may derail self-study. ...

hypothesis
noun [C] plural hypotheses
an idea or explanation for something that is based on known facts but has not yet been proved:
Several hypotheses for global warming have been suggested.

hypothesize
verb [I or T] FORMAL
to give a possible but not yet proved explanation for something:
There's no point hypothesizing about how the accident happened, since we'll never really know.

hypothetical
adjective
imagined or suggested but not necessarily real or true:
a hypothetical example/situation
This is all very hypothetical but supposing Jackie got the job, how would that affect you?

quark1

(kwôrk, kwärk)

n.
Any of a group of six elementary particles having electric charges of a magnitude one-third or two-thirds that of the electron, regarded as constituents of all hadrons.

[From Three quarks for Muster Mark!, a line in Finnegans Wake by James Joyce.]

Origin of the word

The word was originally coined by Murray Gell-Mann as a nonsense word rhyming with "pork".^[1] Later, he found the same word in James Joyce's book Finnegans Wake, where seabirds give "three quarks", akin to three cheers (probably onomatopoeically imitating a seabird call, like "quack" for ducks, as well as making a pun on the relationship between Munster and its provincial capital, Cork) in the passage "Three quarks for Muster Mark!/Sure he has not got much of a bark/And sure any he has it's all beside the mark." Further explanation for the use of the word "quark" may be derived from the fact that, at the time, there were only three known quarks in existence.

WORD HISTORY

“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.”

This passage from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, part of a scurrilous 13-line poem directed against King Mark, the cuckolded husband in the Tristan legend, has left its mark on modern physics.

The poem and the accompanying prose are packed with names of birds and words suggestive of birds, and the poem is a squawk against the king that suggests the cawing of a crow. The word quark comes from the standard English verb quark, meaning “to caw, croak,” and also from the dialectal verb quawk, meaning “to caw, screech like a bird.”

It is easy to see why Joyce chose the word, but why should it have become the name for a group of hypothetical subatomic particles proposed as the fundamental units of matter? Murray Gell-Mann, the physicist who proposed this name for these particles, said in a private letter of June 27, 1978, to the editor of the Oxford English Dictionary that he had been influenced by Joyce's words: “The allusion to three quarks seemed perfect” (originally there were only three subatomic quarks). Gell-Mann, however, wanted to pronounce the word with (ô) not (ä), as Joyce seemed to indicate by rhyming words in the vicinity such as Mark. Gell-Mann got around that “by supposing that one ingredient of the line ‘Three quarks for Muster Mark’ was a cry of ‘Three quarts for Mister . . . ’ heard in H.C. Earwicker's pub,” a plausible suggestion given the complex punning in Joyce's novel. It seems appropriate that this perplexing and humorous novel should have supplied the term for particles that come in six “flavors” and three “colors.”

Definition of scurrilous

1a: using or given to coarse language

b: vulgar and evilscurrilous imposters who used a religious exterior to rob poor people— Edwin Benson

2: containing obscenities, abuse, or slanderscurrilous accusations

squawk
verb [I] noun
1 to make an unpleasantly loud sharp cry:
As the fox came into the yard, the chickens began squawking in alarm.

2 INFORMAL DISAPPROVING to complain about something noisily:
Environmental groups have been squawking about the decision to build the motorway through a forest.

barker

/ˈbɑːkə/

noun

INFORMAL

1. a tout at an auction, sideshow, etc., who calls out to passers-by to attract custom.

bark

n.

1. The harsh sound uttered by a dog.
2. A sound, such as a cough, that is similar to a dog's bark.

v., barked, bark·ing, barks. v.intr.

1. To utter a bark.
2. To make a sound similar to a bark: “The birds bark softly, sounding almost like young pups” (Charleston SC News and Courier).
3. To speak sharply; snap: “a spot where you can just drop in . . . without anyone's barking at you for failing to plan ahead” (Andy Birsh).
4. To work as a barker, as at a carnival.

v.tr.
To utter in a loud, harsh voice: The quarterback barked out the signals.