The story
From the first initial of Wolfgang Dür, one of the first people to report this state.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
W state
Today it means: A quantum state of three qubits which has the following shape: |W⟩=1/(√3)(|001⟩+|010⟩+|100⟩). It is remarkable for representing a specific type of multipartite entanglement and for occurring in several applications in quantum information theory. Full definition →