Definition of "q" []

• The 17th letter of the modern English alphabet. (noun)
• Any of the speech sounds represented by the letter q. (noun)
• The 17th in a series. (noun)
• Something shaped like the letter Q. (noun)
• A hypothetical lost manuscript, consisting largely of sayings of Jesus, that is believed to have been the source of those passages in Matthew and Luke that bear close similarity to each other but not to parallel passages in Mark. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "A better alternative is to take the observed values q, q², q³, ¦ as the actual elements of reality, and view Ψ just as a bookkeeping device, determined by the actual values q, q², q³,"
• "In the last step they arbitrarily introduce a heat density source, Q, and a heat current density term, q, to represent the flow of thermal energy."
• "Also take the quantities q, q², r, r² of the above lemma (11) to be the single expectation values:"