Higgs boson

American  

[higz] / hɪgz /

noun

Physics.

1. a hypothetical type of heavy, electrically neutral particle with zero spin.

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Higgs boson British  

/ hɪɡz /

noun

1. Also called: God particle.  physics an elementary particle with zero spin and mass greater than zero, predicted to exist by electroweak theory and other gauge theories

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Higgs boson Scientific  

/ hĭgz /

1. A hypothetical, massive subatomic particle with zero electric charge. The Higgs boson is postulated to interact with other particles in such a way as to impart mass to them. It is predicted by the standard model, but has yet to be isolated experimentally. The Higgs boson is named after its discoverer, British theoretical physicist Peter Ware Higgs (born 1929).

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Etymology

Origin of Higgs boson

Named after Peter W. Higgs (born 1929), English physicist, who hypothesized its existence

Example Sentences

Among the names read out was Prof Peter Higgs, the British theorist who, nearly half a century earlier, had predicted the existence of a particle believed to hold the cosmos together – the Higgs boson.

From BBC • Mar. 17, 2026

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

Higgs predicted the existence of a new particle — the so-called Higgs boson — in 1964.

From Seattle Times • Apr. 9, 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