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photon

Pronunciation: /ˈfəʊtɒn/

The English word “photon” has 1 meaning listed here.

noun

  1. The quantum of light and other electromagnetic energy, regarded as a discrete particle having zero rest mass, no electric charge, and an indefinitely long lifetime. It is a gauge boson.

Etymology

From photo- + -on. Coined by American physicist Leonard Troland in 1916 as a unit of light hitting the retina, and later popularized in a more modern sense by Gilbert N. Lewis, with the term gaining acceptance in the physics community by the late 1920s.

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.