Noun

(en noun)

A spherically contained volume of air or other gas, especially one made from soapy liquid.

A small spherical cavity in a solid material.

bubbles in window glass, or in a lens

Anything resembling a hollow sphere.

(economics) A period of intense speculation in a market, causing prices to rise quickly to irrational levels as the metaphorical bubble expands, and then fall even more quickly as the bubble bursts (eg the ).

(obsolete) Someone who has been ‘bubbled’ or fooled; a dupe.

* Prior

Granny's a cheat, and I'm a bubble .

* 1749 , Henry Fielding, Tom Jones , Folio Society 1979, p. 15:

For no woman, sure, will plead the passion of love for an excuse. This would be to own herself the mere tool and bubble of the man.

(figurative) The emotional and/or physical atmosphere in which the subject is immersed; circumstances, ambience.

* {{quote-news, year=2012

, date=June 3 , author=Nathan Rabin , title=TV: Review: THE SIMPSONS (CLASSIC): “Mr. Plow” (season 4, episode 9; originally aired 11/19/1992) citation , page= , passage=He’s wrapped up snugly in a cozy bubble of self-regard, talking for his own sake more than anyone else’s.}}

* {{quote-news, year=2011

, date=January 23 , author=Alistair Magowan , title=Blackburn 2 - 0 West Brom , work=BBC citation , page= , passage=Thomas, so often West Brom's most positive attacker down their left side and up against Salgado, twice almost burst the bubble of excitement around the ground but he had two efforts superbly saved by Robinson.}}

(Cockney rhyming slang) a Greek (also: bubble and squeak)

A small, hollow, floating bead or globe, formerly used for testing the strength of spirits.

The globule of air in the spirit tube of a level.

Anything lacking firmness or solidity; a cheat or fraud; an empty project.

* Shakespeare

Then a soldier / Seeking the bubble reputation / Even in the cannon's mouth.

(Cockney rhyming slang) A laugh. (also: bubble bath)

Are you having a bubble ?!

Noun

(en noun)

A very small piece of matter, a fragment; especially, the smallest possible part of something.

(linguistics, sensu lato) A part of speech which can not be declined, an adverb, preposition, conjunction or interjection

* 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)

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.

* 1894 (2008), B. L. Gildersleeve & G. Lodge: Gildersleeve's Latin Grammar (reprint of the 3rd edition by Dover, 2008), p.9. ( at books.google)

The Parts of Speech are the Noun (Substantive and Adjective), the Pronoun, the Verb, and the Particles (Adverb, Preposition, and Conjunction)[.]

(linguistics, sensu stricto) A word that has a particular grammatical function but does not obviously belong to any particular part of speech, such as the word to in English infinitives or O as the vocative particle.

* {{quote-web

, date = 1965-06-04 , author = Shigeyuki Kuroda , title = Generative grammatical studies in the Japanese language , site = DSpace@MIT , url = http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/13006 , accessdate = 2014-02-24 , page = 38 }}

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 Japanese, on the other hand, the distinction is grammatically realized through the use of the two particles wa and ga.

*

Traditional grammar typically recog-
nises a number of further categories: for example, in his Reference Book of
Terms in Traditional Grammar for Language Students'', Simpson (1982) posits
two additional word-level categories which he refers to as ''Particle'', and
''Conjunction''. Particles include the italicised words in (58) below:
(58) (a)      He put his hat ''on''
       (b)      If you pull too hard, the handle will come ''off''
       (c)      He was leaning too far over the side, and fell ''out''
       (d)      He went ''up to see the manager

(physics) Any of various physical objects making up the constituent parts of an atom; an elementary particle or subatomic particle.

* 2011 , & Jeff Forshaw, The Quantum Universe , Allen Lane 2011, p. 55:

What, he asked himself, does quantum theory have to say about the familiar properties of particles such as position?

*{{quote-magazine, year=2012, month=March-April

, author=(Jeremy Bernstein) , title=A Palette of Particles , volume=100, issue=2, page=146 , magazine=(American Scientist) citation , passage=The physics of elementary particles' in the 20th century was distinguished by the observation of ' particles whose existence had been predicted by theorists sometimes decades earlier.}}