Gary writes to suggest "quantum" as an overused (or misused)word. "In my Physics days (about 2 score back) quantum meant the smallest unit, non-divisable unit, of a physical quantity . . . usually energy. So how did quantum leap get so big?"
I dunno, Gary, but I'll try to find out. Or maybe somebody else out there knows the answer. It seems to me this may be an example of a class of words that have come to mean the opposite of their original sense. I know there are others in this class, and will try to think of them. Again, readers?
Gary's message arrived while I was pondering another odd use of "quantum," in a scientific article I was editing: "In the tropics, changes in the quantum and distribution of rainfall . . . gradually alter the vegetation formation." In this case, it just seems as if the writer is using "quantum" when he means "quantity"---or perhaps it's scientific lingo now to use the fancier word. Still strikes me as odd.
This seems to be the day to appeal to readers. I've just switched my e-mail from insightbb.com to william.bridges1@comcast.net. (Getting this straightened out with Comcast took just a little longer than it took God to create the world.) Since I've been using my old and soon-to-expire Insight address as my username in Google's blogger, I'd like to change it. (Gary's message arrived via Insight.) But Google apparently has no way to change the username on an existing account---or at least I can't find one. I could set up a new account to add to my existing Google accounts, but I don't want to. I just want to put a different username on Editorland. Why can't I do this??? Why is life so difficult???
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Here's what Fowler's Modern English Usage has to say about "quantum," which may or may not shed some light on the subject of Mr. Editorland's and his friend's bewilderment:
"quantum": In physics a quantum is a 20c. term for "a minimum amount of a physical quantity which can exist and by multiples of which changes in the quantity occur. A 'quantum jump' which can be small or large, is simply an abrupt transition between one stationary state of a quantum system and another. In popular use, since the 1950s, and, from the 1970s, in the form of 'quantum leap,' the phr. has been gleefully and endlessly used in general contexts to mean 'a sudden large increase.' It is one of the most striking POPULARIZED TECHNICALITIES of the 20c."(mostly credited to OED)
Now I'm sure we all understand it completely, yes? Well, no, if your brain is as unscientically oriented as mine. And, even if it isn't, the explanation doesn't quite clarify how the emphasis on the abruptness of a "quantum jump" became something, in "quantum leap," that stresses the hugeness with little or no concern about the abruptness.
So, in other words, we still don't know for sure how that phrase came to mean what it has come to mean.
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