hadron
Americannoun
noun
-
Any of a class of subatomic particles composed of a combination of two or more quarks or antiquarks. Quarks (and antiquarks) of different colors are held together in hadrons by the strong nuclear force. Hadrons include both baryons (composed of three quarks or three antiquarks) and mesons (composed of a quark and an antiquark). The combination of quark colors in a hadron must be neutral, for example, red and antired (as in a pion) or red, blue, and green (as in a proton).
Other Word Forms
- hadronic adjective
Etymology
Origin of hadron
1962; < Greek hadr ( ós ) thick, bulky + -on 1
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.
Based on this picture, it seems reasonable to assume that the disorder of the system, known as entropy, should change between the early parton phase and the later hadron phase.
From Science Daily • Jan. 5, 2026
To reach higher energies, physicists usually build bigger, more powerful hadron colliders that smash protons into either protons or antiprotons.
From Science Magazine • Mar. 27, 2024
So why do they need an even larger hadron collider?
From BBC • Feb. 4, 2024
Lambda particles are baryons, which means they’re a type of hadron made of three quarks: one up quark, one down quark and one strange quark.
From Scientific American • Apr. 27, 2023
Although quarks have never been directly observed, several predictions of the quark model were quickly confirmed, and their properties explain all known hadron characteristics.
From Textbooks • Aug. 12, 2015
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.