Baryon
noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A heavy subatomic particle created by the binding of quarks by gluons; a hadron containing three quarks. Baryons have half-odd integral spin and are thus fermions. This category includes the common proton and neutron of the atomic nucleus. particle
"Without prejudging on the actual nature of the relationship between the V₁ and the nucleon it seems practical to have a collective name for these particles and other which possibly may still be discovered and which may also have to be taken along in the conservation principle just mentioned. It is proposed to use the fitting name "baryon" for this purpose."
- 2 any of the elementary particles having a mass equal to or greater than that of a proton and that participate in strong interactions; a hadron with a baryon number of +1 wordnet
Example
More examples"Without prejudging on the actual nature of the relationship between the V₁ and the nucleon it seems practical to have a collective name for these particles and other which possibly may still be discovered and which may also have to be taken along in the conservation principle just mentioned. It is proposed to use the fitting name "baryon" for this purpose."
Etymology
From Ancient Greek βαρύς (barús, “heavy”) + -on. Coined by Dutch-American physicist Abraham Pais in 1953. Equivalent to baryo- + -on.
Related phrases
More for "baryon"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.