Disputatio:Quarcum

Num quis habet alium nomen ? --Marc mage 15:23, 3 Novembris 2007 (UTC)

Vide Physica particularum minimarum--Rafaelgarcia 16:21, 3 Novembris 2007 (UTC)

Quarcium?--Rafaelgarcia 16:22, 3 Novembris 2007 (UTC)

Stephanus Berard dixit "Quarcum" in suo commentario; credo utraeque formae sunt bonae.--Rafaelgarcia 23:39, 3 Novembris 2007 (UTC)

In my opinion, for a forming theme in -k the normal declension would end in -x. In other words, if quark had been a P.I.E. root, Latin would have probably inherited it as quarx, quarcis. --Grufo (disputatio) 11:42, 19 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

Yes, and if quark had been a P.I.E. root with this meaning, the subsequent history of the world would have been very different :)

I removed the alternative "quarcum" because we have no source for it. Rafael (above) implies that there is a source, but doesn't cite it. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 13:20, 19 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

Having dined with Rafael (long ago) and therefore having had a chance to assay his character directly, I have no reason to believe he was the sort of person who'd invent false stories about Latinists and their vocabulary, so I'd be willing to accept that quarcum is indeed a form used somewhere by Berard, and so quarcum will one day be an attested form; but of course Vicipaedia does want the exact text of the attestation. Until it arrives, if nobody has even a hint of an attestation from anywhere else, the weight of the evidence favors quarcum as a lemma. (Rafael, come back if you can!) IacobusAmor (disputatio) 14:59, 19 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

I believe him too, and I want him back too, but until we have a real citation Neander was correct to move to "quarcium" which is attested. In our rules, that attestation outweighs the attractive but unattested proposal "quarx". Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 15:32, 19 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

Ah, I hadn't seen that. So yes, quarcium is a genuine lemma, even if it's wrongly formed. :) IacobusAmor (disputatio) 15:42, 19 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

FYI: while waking up in the morning, one tends to read the Nuper Mutata up from the bottom (that is, in temporal order); hence what may occasionally seem like the beating of dead horses. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 15:50, 19 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

Formally yes, it's a lemma. But won't it create confusion with the english words "neutronium" and "quarkium" (the matter composed just of neutrons or quarks)? --Grufo (disputatio) 15:48, 19 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

True. If you decided to commandeer "quarcium" and use it as the Latin equivalent of "quarkium", I'm sure you're doing something we've done before. But we still don't allow ourselves to invent "quarx". Publish it somewhere else first, then use it here! Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 17:53, 19 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

Probably yes :) Quarcium sounds a bit better than quarcum, but it opens two problems, one of which is personal O:)

• I hate that latin neologisms always tend to get longer words than they could simply be (ok, this is the personal one)
• Quarcium could be the name of the matter of a quark star, in the same way as we call "neutronium" the matter of a neutron star (matter that is composed just of neutrons)

I keep proposing quarx, quarcis for the particle and, eventually, quarcium for the english "quarkium" (the matter composed of unconfined quarks) :)--Grufo (disputatio) 14:14, 19 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

Inventa apud Google

Nobis affirmat Google:

1. Quarcum Technologies, a Brazilian microelectronic company founded in 2009, refers its name to Latin: "Originado da palavra quark que, por definição, é, na física de partículas, a palavra congregante dada às partículas elementares na formação da matéria, como tudo que tocamos, usamos e criamos. Leonardo D’Vinci, ícone das invenções e criatividade, complementou o nome Quarcum na referência ao latim" (http://quarcum.com.br/capa.asp?p=225). IacobusAmor (disputatio) 14:59, 19 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

2. The word quarcum seems to be mentioned in a patent for the selective froth-flotation of sulfidic, oxidic and salt-type minerals, but perhaps that's something else, or a mechanical misreading of quarzum. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 14:59, 19 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

As to your first example, I don't think we can take it as reliable evidence that the word "Quarcum" is Latin. It's an allusion to Latin, as is "excellium" and all the rest of those recent horrible marketing words, but that's as far as it goes. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 15:38, 19 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

The point was merely for the record, noting that it's out there, in the real world, as a supposed Latin word. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 15:44, 19 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

Origin of the (English) word

It's perhaps worth noting the origin of the (English) word:

In 1963, when I assigned the name "quark" to the fundamental constituents of the nucleon, I had the sound first, without the spelling, which could have been "kwork". Then, in one of my occasional perusals of Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce, I came across the word "quark" in the phrase "Three quarks for Muster Mark". Since "quark" (meaning, for one thing, the cry of the gull) was clearly intended to rhyme with "Mark", as well as "bark" and other such words, I had to find an excuse to pronounce it as "kwork". But the book represents the dream of a publican named Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker. Words in the text are typically drawn from several sources at once, like the "portmanteau" words in "Through the Looking-Glass". From time to time, phrases occur in the book that are partially determined by calls for drinks at the bar. I argued, therefore, that perhaps one of the multiple sources of the cry "Three quarks for Muster Mark" might be "Three quarts for Mister Mark", in which case the pronunciation "kwork" would not be totally unjustified. In any case, the number three fitted perfectly the way quarks occur in nature. (Ex en:Quark.)

If a quark is the quack of a bird, Latin already has tetrissatus, ūs. :) IacobusAmor (disputatio) 15:18, 19 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

Or, if quark is intended to be a (mis)pronunciation of quart, then since quart reflects quartu(s,m), English quark is going to have to be quarcu(s,m), and the infixed i would be an error. ;) IacobusAmor (disputatio) 15:18, 19 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

The -tus in quartus is a P.I.E. suffix, the same suffix that we find in the german words erste, zweite, etc. But therefore in quartus the suffix is -tus, not just -us. Replacing the -t- of -tus with a -c-, and creating so the suffix *-cus, doesn't seem a good way of dealing with latin to me. "Quark" is an invented word, without any meaning or root. It's a root itself. And this root ends with -k: which makes me prefer quarx, quarcis. --Grufo (disputatio) 15:38, 19 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

Quarx

My synthesis about quarcium…

The question is: really?!?

I mean: should we really follow such a scholastic praxis – even when the schola is wrong – for a word that doesn't have per se any meaning and was just invented in order to rhyme with "Mark", as well as "bark" and other such words?!?

Should we really consider schola one single attestation from one single scholar in such a particular case?

Last but not least… what's about the translation of the english "quarkium"? Shouldn't we keep the word quarcium for that, instead of using it for translating "quark"?

My proposal is to use the form quarx, quarcis. In doing so we would follow the pattern of some latin words formed from a foreign theme in -k, like merx (< *merk – possibly Etruscan) or, even better, like arx (< *ark – semitic?). Our quarx would follow the same type of pattern.

I would like to ask the community to move the page to "Quarx". Maybe we could vote about it!

--Grufo (disputatio) 14:33, 23 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

I'm against "quarx -cis" unless it is published elsewhere. I don't know what you mean by "scholastic praxis". This is our policy "Noli fingere" which is a nice, brief, Latin way of stating the equivalent English "en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not for things made up one day". I wouldn't use an encyclopedia that made things up. If "Quarcium" is unsuitable (and you may be right there) then the word for us is the straight borrowing "Quark" (indecl.). Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 20:33, 23 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

I'm with Andrew here. Neander (disputatio) 20:41, 23 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I think we need not always follow published sources (the scholae I think Grufo is referring to), but if we don't, then we should stick with indeclinable quark, rather than inventing something new. Out of what is written above, the strongest argument against quarcium seems to be the different meaning of "quarkium" in English, "a bizarre Fermi liquid", but this term seems very rare; maybe it didn't catch on? Lesgles (disputatio) 18:29, 24 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

I'm not a physicist… Maybe the english "quarkium" is a relatively rare word due to the hypothetical status of quark stars – while the "neutronium" of neutron stars is currently considered a commonly accepted part of the cosmological standard model. But, in my opinion, we should at least consider the english "quarkium" a reserved word.

Regarding the translation of the english "quark", if I had to choose between the latin indeclinable quark and the declinable-but-wrong quarcium, I would definitely prefer quark (indecl.). But, still, I think that the best that we could do is to ask some scholar for his/her opinion about this problem and, possibly, about the words quarx/quarcum/quarcium.

The strongest argument against quark is that indeclinable words in Latin always create a non-trivial problem regarding their usage, especially words as technical as "quark". An indeclinable quark might seriously forbid its usage in a technical paper written in Latin.

I'm still for quarx :)

Case	Singular	Plural
nominative	quarx	quarcēs
genitive	quarcis	quarcium
dative	quarcī	quarcibus
accusative	quarcem	quarcēs
ablative	quarce	quarcibus
vocative	quarx	quarcēs

— Grufo (disputatio) 20:08, 25 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

Publishing this on a talk page is a great idea, and if a Latin technical paper or news report or blog or scientific glossary picks up the word from here and uses it, that could serve as a source for us to re-title the article.

Forgive me for adding a personal comment. I made a resolution, when I began to publish, that in each new article I would introduce a new word (I mean, a neologism of my own). I kept my resolution, I think, for a few years ... But by the time I started writing encyclopedia articles, I had dropped it, luckily. It's not what encyclopedia articles ought to do. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 10:06, 26 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

Let's see what will happen then! :) --Grufo (disputatio) 15:28, 26 Decembris 2015 (UTC)

I added "quarx" in the article as a possibility --Grufo (disputatio) 15:47, 14 Ianuarii 2016 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I took it out again. We have a lemma with a source: there's no excuse for adding an alternative with no source. If the word gets into circulation, fine. You could help it into circulation, in a publication or on someone's blog. If it mattered to me as much as that, that's how I would do it. Just a suggestion. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 16:08, 14 Ianuarii 2016 (UTC)

It's ok! I thought I had seen somewhere else here on Vicipaedia a similar case, that's why I added the second possibility. --Grufo (disputatio) 16:04, 15 Ianuarii 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply, Grufo. Oh, I'm not saying you haven't seen such a thing on some other page -- Vicipaedia is a work in progress -- but, if you see it again, it should go. If there's a sourced lemma in Latin, there should not also be an unsourced lemma in Latin. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 16:22, 15 Ianuarii 2016 (UTC)

If no attested term were evident, a speculative lemma might be OK, marked with a {{Convertimus}} tag, but since an attestation exists, speculation belongs here in the disputation page. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 18:01, 15 Ianuarii 2016 (UTC)

@Iacobus That's exactly what I did, {{Convertimus}} tag included. I think this might be one of the cases where a speculative lemma may cohabitate. --Grufo (disputatio) 01:57, 16 Ianuarii 2016 (UTC)

Grufo, please read Iacobus's comment again. He said "if no attested term were evident".

I gently suggest that you consider this discussion closed, unless and until a further relevant external source is found. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 09:29, 16 Ianuarii 2016 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I didn't interpret Iacobus' comment properly! I thought he meant "evident" as "widely accepted", and so I replaced in my mind his sentence with "If no attested term were evident widely accepted, a speculative lemma might be OK". It's really my error. Discussions are useful also for this! --Grufo (disputatio) 02:53, 17 Ianuarii 2016 (UTC)

Nomina quarcorum

Aside from the word quarcum itself (vide supra), we have the question of what the Latin names of individual quarks might be. This is not an unimportant question! According to the collective wisdom of the authors of Meta, the six flavors of quarks are among the ten thousand most important topics in the world! Adding quark-related pages yesterday & today, I've retained the names that have been in Vicipaedia for years, but they seem somewhat problematic. The names of subatomic particles are so recent (some dating from the 1970s or later) that, unsurprisingly, their names even in English (their inventors' language) and therefore necessarily in Latin are still unsettled.

In "Quarcum deorsum" & "Quarcum sursum," we seem to have adverbs modifying nouns (which they can't do in traditional grammar). Since the English down and up are presumably being perceived to be nouns here, perhaps, in an access of postmodern bravery, we can reimagine deorsum & sursum as nouns, but do we have any warrant for that?

The similar use of objective nouns (recently in popular linguistics called noun adjuncts) occurs in the pattern of charm quark, where charm is a noun modifying quark (see "Quarcum lepor"). Yet for the same thing, English-speaking scientists have produced the term charmed quarks, with the charming aspect now being a participle—syntax that appeals to the French ("quark charmé") and the Spanish ("quark encantado"). But lepor doesn't seem susceptible of being participle-ized, unless one can posit leporatus. Other words available for 'charm' are blandimentum, dulcedo, and venustas, and they seem to suffer from the same grammatical restriction.

And in strange quark (see "Quarcum mirum"), even the sense of the English is open to interpretation. What does strange mean? Is it really mirus? or is it something more like insolitus or inusitatus? or maybe peregrinus or adventicius? or alienus? At least mirus is related to miror and can therefore generate quarcum miratum, or even quarcum mirandum, if necessary.

In general, these names—and the names of many concepts developed in physics over the past few decades—want further thought. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 15:02, 31 Iulii 2021 (UTC)

Quarcum superius — q. inferius — fascinatum — mirum (vel peregrinum etc., ut velis) — summum — imum. Omnia erunt {{Convertimus}}, sed Latine. "Deorsum, sursum, lepor" — quasi machina haec vertebat. Demetrius Talpa (disputatio) 06:36, 1 Augusti 2021 (UTC)