particle
Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
particle/ˈpɑːtɪkl/
▶noun
- 1 a minute portion of matter.
- 2 Physics a subatomic constituent of the physical world, e.g. an electron, proton, neutrino, or photon.
- 3 Grammar a minor function word that has comparatively little meaning and does not inflect, e.g. in, up, off, or over used with verbs to make phrasal verbs.
– origin ME: from L. particula ‘little part’, dimin. of pars, part-.
'particle' also found in these Oxford entries:
acoustic impedance
- alpha particle
- annihilate
- anti-
- antiparticle
- atom
- axion
- barn
- baryon
- beta particle
- boson
- bremsstrahlung
- capsid
- capture
- -cle
- corpuscle
- cosmic ray
- coupling constant
- dead time
- decay
- disintegration
- efflux
- electron
- fermion
- floater
- frit fly
- globule
- gluon
- grain
- granule
- graviton
- ground state
- gyromagnetic
- hadron
- helicity
- Higgs boson
- hyperon
- -icle
- inclusion
- isospin
- kaon
- lepton
- meson
- metastable
- muon
- nanoparticle
- neutrino
- neutron
- particle board
