A: “Quark” is a relatively new term that American physicist Murray Gell-Mann coined for the hypothetical, fractionally charged constituents of baryons and mesons. According to Gell-Mann’s own account, he was in the habit of using names like “squeak” and “squork” for peculiar objects, and the word “quork” (rhyming with pork) happened to be the word he picked for these little objects. Some months after he began calling them “quorks,” so he tells the story, he ran across the line “Three quarks for Muster Mark” in James Joyce’s “Finnegan’s Wake.” The line struck him as apropos, since the hypothetical particles came in threes, and he adopted Joyce’s spelling for his “quork.” Joyce clearly meant “quark” to rhyme with “Mark,” “bark,” “park,” and so forth, but Gell-Mann worked out a rationale for his own pronunciation based on the vowel of the word “quart.” Joyce himself apparently took the word from German, in which language it refers to a cheese something like cottage cheese that is an early stage in cheese manufacture. It’s also used as a synonym for the German word “quatsch,” meaning “trivial nonsense.”

Q Could you explain to me the difference between the words “discreet” and “discrete”? Are they related in any way? – N.S., San Francisco

A: The homophonic adjectives “discreet” and “discrete” are often confused with each other, though they have much different meanings. “Discreet” can be used to describe people who show good judgment in their speech or who are careful with their words (“a discreet friend”), as well as the remarks made by such people (“a discreet comment”). It can also describe something that is kept modest or unnoticeable. A rendezvous between lovers might be discreet, for example, as well as a ceremony that is low-key.

“Discrete” refers to things that are individually distinct or separate. A process can be broken down into several discrete stages, for example, or an organization can be arranged in a number of discrete levels. The field of discrete mathematics deals with things that are countable, such as number sets and integers, instead of concepts like decimals that can be infinitely divided.

Despite their vastly different meanings, “discreet” and “discrete” do share etymological roots. Both words come from the Latin “discretus,” a past participle of the verb “discernere,” meaning “to separate” or “to distinguish between.”

Q A friend of mine often uses the phrase “split hairs” to mean argue over petty details. Where does this interesting expression come from? – R.M., Muskegon, Mich.

A: We define the phrase “split hairs” as “to make oversubtle or trivial distinctions.” As early as 1674, a writer lamented that “the great difficulty (is) so to behave oneself, as to split a hair between them, and never offend either of them.” Back then, “split a hair” meant to divide something, as a single strand of hair, evenly so as to give an advantage to no one. To attempt to split something as small as a strand of hair evenly is not only an impossible but also a pointless endeavor. Hence, the phrase soon acquired an ironic reference to arguing over trivialities, and it began to be used disparagingly. To this day, we often use the phrase to convey the futility of wasting time and effort on arguing over something as trivial as how to split a hair evenly.

This column was prepared by the editors of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Tenth Edition.

Readers may send questions to Merriam-Webster’s Wordwatch, P.O. Box 281, 47 Federal St., Springfield, MA 01102.

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