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In lugnet.off-topic.fun, Jeff Jardine writes:
> Yes, 'impact' can be used as a verb, but not when the author/speaker should
> be using 'affect' or 'influence.' People seem to use it when they're trying
> to make a greater 'impact' on their audience, and that bothers me. I'm not
> alone on this:
A recent commercial for some make of Kia shows a series of crash test
simulations, apparently to tout the durability of the vehicle. The
voiceover concludes by saying "Pretty impactful, eh?" Impactful! As of
this morning, neither www.dictionary.com nor www.yourdictionary.com
recognized it as a word, but google returns over 26,000 hits; that suggests
that the word is here to stay, whether we like it or not. By the way, a
coworker recently learned the word "vex" and has subsequently decribed
things as "vexful" when they irritate him, and that impacts me most vexfully.
The word is a superfluous, inflated construction and, as you point out, is
used to give a person more zaz[1]. It strikes me as very similar to adding
a string of adjectives or adverbs to shore up a weak noun or verb.
Dave!
[1] see: http://www.lardlad.com/assets/quotes/season9/girly.shtml
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Geek Speak?
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| (...) Yes, 'impact' can be used as a verb, but not when the author/speaker should be using 'affect' or 'influence.' People seem to use it when they're trying to make a greater 'impact' on their audience, and that bothers me. I'm not alone on this: (...) (22 years ago, 13-Nov-02, to lugnet.off-topic.fun, lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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