Impact

Just when did impact become a verb for anything outside of medical/dental circles? I had a professor in grad school back in the '90s who was already disgruntled by the word's use, so it has been working its way into everyday conversation for a while. You know what I mean. "The shooting impacted the neighbors." I get this mental picture of neighbors all shoved together in a garage for safety--like teeth in a jaw with nowhere to go. The use of impact as a verb, really shorthand for make an impact, has to be directly attributed to news anchors. Again, like transparency and closure, the word impact sounds just a little more important that it really is, like the speaker knows just a little more than the listener or at least is in the know. He or she is in the club. It is similar to all the academic types who loved shifting paradigms back in the '90s. But, back to impact, I think I would like to coin a term ala Bucky of Darby Conley's Get Fuzzy when he came up with "verbify." In his case, he was talking about just what I am, the misuse, creation, or manipulation of words into roles where they do not belong. I would like to add the term mediafy. The definition is to verbify but only when done by, or at least lead by, the media. So this whole impact thing falls under mediafication. I feel really smart and smug right now, but my head hurts. I think I'll have a lie down.