particles

Noun

particle (plural particles)

1. A very small piece of matter, a fragment; especially, the smallest possible part of something.
   • Be content with the knowledge that, ere the voyage had ended, both she and I were desperately and unreasoningly in love with one another. Heaven knows that I can make the admission now without one particle of vanity.1888, Rudyard Kipling, “The Phantom Rickshaw”, in The Phantom 'Rickshaw and Other Tales, Allahabad: A.H. Wheeler and Co., page 10

   Synonyms:

   bit, chip, chunk, tranche, clip, crumb, crumbling, cutting, flake, fleak

2. Any of various physical objects making up the constituent parts of an atom; an elementary particle or subatomic particle.
   • What, he asked himself, does quantum theory have to say about the familiar properties of particles such as position?2011, Brian Cox, Jeff Forshaw, The Quantum Universe, Allen Lane, published 2011, page 55
3. A part of speech that has no inherent lexical definition but must be associated with another word to impart meaning, often a grammatical category: for example, the English word to in a full infinitive phrase (to eat) or O in a vocative phrase (O Canada), or as a discourse marker (mmm).
   • In English there is no grammatical device to differentiate predicational judgments from nonpredicational descriptions. This distinction does cast a shadow on the grammatical sphere to some extent, but recognition of it must generally be made in semantic terms. It is maintained here that in...1965 June 4, Shigeyuki Kuroda, “Generative grammatical studies in the Japanese language”, in DSpace@MIT, retrieved 24 Feb 2014, page 38

   Synonyms:

   p-word

4. A part of speech which cannot be inflected.
   • 322. The parts of speech which are neither declined nor conjugated, are called by the general name of particles. 323. They are adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections.1844, E. A. Andrews: First Lessions in Latin; or Introduction to Andrews and Stoddard's Latin Grammar. (6th edition, Boston), p.91 (at books.google)
5. In the Roman Catholic church, a crumb of consecrated bread; also the smaller breads used in the communion of the laity.
   • the Sacred Particle
6. A little bit.
   • "That doesn't make a particle of difference", replied Charlotte. "Not a particle."1952, E.B. White, Charlotte's Web, page 89

   Synonyms:

   atom, molecule, ace, thought, atomy, aught, bissel, continental, bit, crumb