A quark is defined as "any of three hypothetical subatomic particles having electric charges of magnitude one-third or two- thirds that of the electron, proposed as the fundamental units of matter." The word is taken from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, where the gulls are ironically hailing the impotent King Mark of the Tristan legend: "Three quarks for Muster Mark!" It is very nearly an arbitrary borrowing (the three qualifies total random- ness). In Joyce the vocable is imitative,...