Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of three electrically neutral leptons (the electron neutrino, muon neutrino and tau neutrino—one in each of the three generations of elementary fermions) that have small or very small masses.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun An elementary particle that is classified as a lepton, and has an extremely small but nonzero mass and no electric charge. It interacts with the surroundings only via the weak force or gravitation, making it very difficult to detect.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an elementary particle with zero charge and zero mass

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Italian, from neutrino, little neutral one : neutro, neuter, neutral (from Latin neuter, neutr-, neuter; see neuter) + -ino, dimutive suff. (from Latin -īnus, adj. suff.; see –ine). Coined by Enrico Fermi on the model of Italian neutrone, neutron, taken as the augmentative of Italian neutro.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Italian neutrino (coined by Enrico Fermi), diminutive of neutro ("neutral").

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word neutrino.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.