Portion vs Particle - What's the difference?
portion | particle |
An allocated amount.
That which is divided off or separated, as a part from a whole; a separated part of anything.
One's fate; lot.
* Bible, Luke xii. 46
* Keble
The part of an estate given or falling to a child or heir; an inheritance.
* Bible, Luke xv. 12
A wife's fortune; a dowry.
* 1613 , , V. iv. 31:
To divide into amounts, as for allocation to specific purposes.
To endow with a portion or inheritance.
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 (
* 1894 (2008), B. L. Gildersleeve & G. Lodge: Gildersleeve's Latin Grammar (reprint of the 3rd edition by Dover, 2008), p.9. (
(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
}}
*
(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:
*{{quote-magazine, year=2012, month=March-April
, author=(Jeremy Bernstein)
, title=A Palette of Particles
, volume=100, issue=2, page=146
, magazine=(American Scientist)
As nouns the difference between portion and particle
is that portion is an allocated amount while particle is a very small piece of matter, a fragment; especially, the smallest possible part of something.As a verb portion
is to divide into amounts, as for allocation to specific purposes.portion
English
Noun
(en noun)- The lord of that servant will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers.
- Man's portion is to die and rise again.
- Give me the portion of goods that falleth to me.
- Commend me to her, and to piece her portion / Tender her this.
Usage notes
Relatively formal, compared to the more informal part or more concrete and casual piece. For example, “part of the money” (both informal) but “portion of the proceeds” (both formal).Synonyms
* part * pieceDerived terms
* portionless * proportionVerb
(en verb)- Him portioned maids, apprenticed orphans, blest. — Alexander Pope.
Usage notes
* Particularly used as portion out. * Relatively formal, compared to the more informal divide, divide up, or the casual divvy, divvy up.Synonyms
* divide, divide up * divvy, divvy upDerived terms
* portion off * portion outExternal links
* * ----particle
English
(wikipedia particle)Noun
(en noun)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.
at books.google)
- The Parts of Speech are the Noun (Substantive and Adjective), the Pronoun, the Verb, and the Particles (Adverb, Preposition, and Conjunction)[.]
- 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
- What, he asked himself, does quantum theory have to say about the familiar properties of particles such as position?
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.}}