particle
Pluralparticles
- 1A very small piece or fragment of matter, especially the smallest possible part of something.
Tiny particles of dust hung in the beam of sunlight.
The filter traps every particle larger than a grain of pollen.
Similarfragment, bit, piece, crumb, flake
Note
The word is a Latin diminutive: particula, "a small part", from pars, "part", which reached English partly through Middle French particule. A particle is always a piece of something larger, which is why writers can lodge one in a person, as Leon Trotsky does in 1933: "a particle of Hitler is lodged in every exasperated petty bourgeois."
- 2Any of the elementary or subatomic physical objects, such as those that make up an atom.
Physicists smash particles together at nearly the speed of light to see what new ones appear.
The neutrino is a particle so light and elusive that trillions pass through your body every second.
Note
Physics sorts particles into the elementary, with no known inner parts, such as electrons, quarks and photons, and the composite, such as protons and neutrons, which are built from quarks. The everyday picture of a tiny solid grain misleads here: in quantum theory a particle also behaves like a wave, and even its position is a matter of probability.
- 3A tiny amount or degree of something.
There wasn't a particle of truth in his story.
She showed not a particle of fear as she walked onto the stage.
Similarbit, iota, grain, atom, hint
Note
Negatives are its natural home: not a particle of difference, without one particle of vanity. In E. B. White's Charlotte's Web, Charlotte says it twice for emphasis, "Not a particle." Its synonym atom works the same way, as in not an atom of truth, and both make an amount sound too small to measure.
- 4A word with no meaning of its own that must go with another word to convey meaning, often marking a grammatical category, like "to" in "to eat" or "O" in "O Canada."
In Japanese, the particle wa marks the topic of a sentence.
Mandarin speakers add the particle ma to turn a statement into a yes-or-no question.
Note
In English the label gathers small words that fit no other class: the to of to eat, the not of negation, the up of give up. Grammars disagree over which words belong, so the same word may be a particle in one book and an adverb or a preposition in another, and a reader should check how a given grammar draws the line.
- 5A part of speech whose words never change form by inflection, such as adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions.
Because it never changes its ending, the Latin word et is classed as a particle.
The student was relieved to find that particles, unlike nouns and verbs, have no endings to memorize.
Note
Latin grammars gave this broad use its home: with nouns and verbs carrying endings, everything that never changes form went into one bin. E. A. Andrews's First Lessons in Latin counts adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections as particles; Gildersleeve's Latin Grammar leaves interjections out. It is wider than the label for small function words, since it takes in whole word classes.
- 6In the Roman Catholic Church, a small fragment of the consecrated host, or one of the smaller wafers given to lay communicants.
The priest gathered every particle from the paten so that none would be lost.
The sacristan set out a ciborium of particles for the congregation's communion.
Note
Two things share the name: the small hosts given to the laity, as distinct from the large host the priest elevates and breaks at Mass, and any crumb that falls from a host. Because Catholic teaching holds the sacrament wholly present in every fragment, a stray particle is gathered up with the same reverence as a whole host.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle French particule and its source, Latin particula (“small part, particle”), a diminutive of pars (“part, piece”).