{"id":518,"date":"2009-02-19T12:00:49","date_gmt":"2009-02-19T18:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/a-quantum-leap-is-not-impressive\/"},"modified":"2011-05-31T11:27:30","modified_gmt":"2011-05-31T17:27:30","slug":"a-quantum-leap-is-not-impressive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2009\/02\/a-quantum-leap-is-not-impressive\/","title":{"rendered":"A “quantum leap” is NOT impressive."},"content":{"rendered":"

Have you ever heard someone say something similar to “The company made a quantum leap in productivity this past quarter.”, as if trying to say that a lot of progress was made?<\/p>\n

I do not know the origin of the phrase “quantum leap”, but you should know that this euphemism, which is especially popular in American business, is essentially a self-negation.<\/p>\n

The classic definition of the noun “quantum” is the smallest quantity of radiant energy that can exist independently.<\/p>\n

A “quantum” in physics is the energy that is equal to the frequency of the associated radiation times Planck’s constant<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And a “quantum leap”<\/a> refers to the discontinuous, instantaneous jump of an electron in an atom from one quantum state to another.<\/p>\n

So taking a “quantum leap” truly refers to taking the smallest leap possible — not exactly what most Americans mean when they say it.<\/p>\n

I suspect that many people misapply the phrase “quantum leap” so that they can sound smarter.<\/p>\n

But they end up sounding a bit ignorant or pompous to anyone who has been exposed to even a little bit of modern physics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you ever heard someone say something similar to “The company made a quantum leap in productivity this past quarter.”, as if trying to say that a lot of progress was made? I do not know the origin of the phrase “quantum leap”, but you should know that this euphemism, which is especially popular in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,15,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-euphemisms","category-nouns","category-self-negation"],"yoast_head":"\nA "quantum leap" is NOT impressive. - Kirk Mahoney . com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kirkmahoney.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2009\/02\/a-quantum-leap-is-not-impressive\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A "quantum leap" is NOT impressive. - Kirk Mahoney . com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Have you ever heard someone say something similar to “The company made a quantum leap in productivity this past quarter.”, as if trying to say that a lot of progress was made? 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