As in a number of the smallest de facto units of anything you can have in the universe?
Currently in the running in my mind:
- Quanta
- Quantums
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Sign up to join this communityAs in a number of the smallest de facto units of anything you can have in the universe?
Currently in the running in my mind:
Merriam-Webster, Wiktionary, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, and the Collins English Dictionary all list only quanta as the plural form. So if I wanted to be on the safe side, I'd recommend that over quantums. The usage stats from the British National Corpus and the Corpus of Contemporary American English look as follows:
BNC COCA
quanta 35 95
quantums 0 3
Google results are too skewed to be included, as Quanta seems to be a popular proper name.
'Quanta' is usually used, but 'quantums' is also valid according to the Oxford English Dictionary.