boson
Americannoun
noun
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Any of a class of elementary or composite particles, including the photon, pion, and gluon, that are not subject to the Pauli exclusion principle (that is, any two bosons can potentially be in the same quantum state). The value of the spin of a boson is always an integer. Mesons are bosons, as are the gauge bosons (the particles that mediate the fundamental forces). They are named after the physicist Satyendra Nath Bose.
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Compare fermion See Note at elementary particle See Table at subatomic particle
Etymology
Origin of boson
1945–50; named after S. N. Bose (1894–1974), Indian physicist; see -on 1
Compare meaning
How does boson compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:
Explanation
A boson is a nuclei with an even mass number. Bosons are subatomic particles. An atom isn’t the smallest thing in the world: there are also subatomic particles, such as bosons. Bosons get their name from Indian physicist S. N. Bose, who first described their behavior. If you want to understand bosons thoroughly, you'd better take a class in in particle physics. In a nutshell, a boson has a symmetric wave-function, therefore obeying Bose-Einstein statistics but not the Pauli exclusion principle. Physicists study bosons to understand how the universe works at the tiniest level.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The 27-kilometre proton-smashing ring, running about 100 metres below France and Switzerland, has, among other things, been used to prove the existence of the Higgs boson.
From Barron's ● Jan. 27, 2026
Take the discovery of the Higgs boson, a particle that helps explain why anything has mass—and thus why atoms, molecules and matter itself can exist.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 12, 2025
"Basically, this collapse produces a lot of particles, including the right-handed neutrinos, the scalar bosons, and the gauge boson, like a shower," study co-author Hamada explains.
From Science Daily ● Dec. 7, 2025
At the 2012 seminar announcing the discovery of the Higgs boson, he declined questions from the press, saying, “Now is not the time or the place.”
From Science Magazine ● Apr. 10, 2024
In order to give particles any mass at all we have to introduce the notional Higgs boson; whether it actually exists is a matter for twenty-first-century physics.
From "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
