BARYON

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does baryon mean? 

• BARYON (noun)
  The noun BARYON has 1 sense:

1. any of the elementary particles having a mass equal to or greater than that of a proton and that participate in strong interactions; a hadron with a baryon number of +1

  Familiarity information: BARYON used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• BARYON (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Any of the elementary particles having a mass equal to or greater than that of a proton and that participate in strong interactions; a hadron with a baryon number of +1

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)

Synonyms:

baryon; heavy particle

Hypernyms ("baryon" is a kind of...):

fermion (any particle that obeys Fermi-Dirac statistics and is subject to the Pauli exclusion principle)

hadron (any elementary particle that interacts strongly with other particles)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "baryon"):

hyperon (any baryon that is not a nucleon; unstable particle with mass greater than a neutron)

nucleon (a constituent (proton or neutron) of an atomic nucleus)

 Context examples 

Studying composite states can give scientists additional insight into the properties of ordinary baryons.

(Physicists discover long-sought 'pentaquark' particle, NSF)

Baryons, including protons and neutrons, are composed of three quarks.

(Physicists discover long-sought 'pentaquark' particle, NSF)

But quarks are even smaller particles—the building blocks of protons, neutrons and other subatomic particles known as baryons.

(Physicists discover long-sought 'pentaquark' particle, NSF)