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God particle

British  

noun

  1. an informal name for Higgs boson

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Example Sentences

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Dubbed "the God particle", its discovery in 2012 broadened science's understanding of how particles acquire mass and earned physicists Peter Higgs and Francois Englert the 2013 Nobel Prize for Physics.

From Barron's • Jan. 27, 2026

Liverpool owner John W Henry showed his sense of humour on Twitter  after posting a link to an article about the "God particle".

From BBC • Sep. 18, 2014

And so was born “Particle Fever,” a new documentary that follows a handful of scientists at CERN: living and working, partying and studying, in their quest for the so-called God particle.

From New York Times • Feb. 24, 2014

This, perhaps, is akin to physicists discovering the God particle and deciding not to tell us – on account of the God particle actually being a murderous old bigot.

From The Guardian • Jul. 29, 2013

Scientists first predicted the existence of the Higgs boson, nicknamed the "God particle" by some in the popular media, in the 1960s to explain why other particles have mass.

From Scientific American • Dec. 12, 2012

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