Quantum

[wererogue]

One line in Captain America: The Winter Soldier near the beginning of the otherwise enjoyable film leaped out at me, grabbed me by the frontal lobe and started kicking me directly in my sense of disbelief"We need a quantum increase in military technology

Comments

[sorceror]

Obviously the scriptwriters need to talk to the folks who titled that recent James Bond film - "Quantum of Solace".

[wererogue]

That one sort of almost worked - I mean, there certainly wasn't an overabundance of solace in the movie...

[elanya]

See definition 2.1!

[wererogue]

Well, exactly.

[forthright]

My theory is that the culprit here is 'quantum leap', which, in context, refers to a discontinuous jump from one state to another, and thus to a qualitative rather than just a gradual, quantitative shift. From there, you get a 'quantum leap' as a radical/large leap, which turns 'quantum' into an adjective meaning 'large'.

[wererogue]

I'm with you on quantum leap, but I could easily believe that it was much less sensible and that people think that it means big because it sounds impressive, which is probably worsened by association with the Quantum Leap TV show.

[psychotropek]

Lasers- what can't they do?