You're listening to Away with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I'm Grant Barrett. And I'm Martha Barnett. The other day I was part of a panel discussion at the

University of San Diego and the topic was language and beauty. And I learned something fascinating

in the course of researching my remarks. I went to Maryam Webster online and I looked up the word

beauty and of course you see all the kinds of definitions that you would expect having to do

with physical appearance or something graceful and ornamental, that kind of thing. But the fifth

definition, the last definition they had on there, they had simply the word bottom as a definition

for beauty. Bottom, do you have any idea what that has to do with? No, some bells are ringing

in my head, but I can't nail them down. They are, okay. Is this a term for the people who make

barrels? No, I don't know. It's not about a human bottom. No, it's not about a human bottom,

it's about physics. Okay. In the 1970s, physics had predicted the existence of two quarks.

Is this coming back to you? Yes, yes. Right, the top and bottom quark. They hadn't discovered them,

but they had predicted their existence. And some of them were calling them T and B for top and

bottom, but there was a movement among some physicists to call those two predicted quarks truth

and beauty rather than top and bottom. And eventually top and bottom won out. Yes, I heard those

for the very first time in Stephen Hawking's book, the book that made him a household name.

Oh, is that right? Yeah, truth and beauty. And I must have been 11 or something when that book

came out. I just thought that was so cool that they're in Miriam Webster. The last definition for

beauty is bottom. And for the record, in terms of science, beauty lasts about one picosecond before

decaying. And a picosecond is a thousandth of a billionth of a second. So beauty is fleeting.

It's very fleeting. This shows about words and language and how we use them. Give us a call,

877-929-673. Email words at waywardreadio.org or talk to us on Twitter at w-a-y-w-o-r-d.

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