During many of the meetings at various Toastmasters' Clubs in Singapore, I often heard speakers using the word "impactful". There is no word of "impactful" in the English dictionary. It should be "full of impact". Instead of saying, "His life was impactful" say "His life was full of impact" or "His life made a strong impact on those who knew him".
It is difficult to comprehend why the person who writes is a writer; the person who teaches is a teacher but the person who cooks is not a cooker! Or why do we have the words "counsellor with counsellee"; "employer with employee" but not "professor with professee"! Or we have the words "thought with thoughtful" but not "impact with impactful" ! Such is the uniqueness and could I humbly add, idiosyncracy of the English Language! Nevertheless, it is this idiosyncracy that makes the mastery of the language so challenging! Hence, we could not really blame Professor Higgins in the movie "My Fair Lady" for pulling his hairs when he asked, "Oh! Why can' the English teach their children to speak" and to warn us about murdering the English tongue!
One of the things I love about being a toastmaster is that I am constantly learning. Yes, though I may have a B.A. in English and a Dip. Ed. in English Literature, there is still so much to learn for English is such a rich and beautiful language. Just take the simple word of "eye". Used differently, the meaning has so many connotations. For eg.
1. Being the youngest son, John is the apple of his parents' eyes.
2. My uncle has an eye for details. He is a good auditor!
3. An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth!
4. What an eye-catching lady!
5. At the party, the amorous Mr. Tan tried to make eyes
with the most beautiful lady - Angelina Wong!
I really hope more of my readers and friends will take the opportunity to join a toastmaster's club and enjoy the same journey of learning! As the Chinese like to say, "Huo dao lao; hsueh dao lao". We learn as we grow old. Constant learning - an antidote for Alzheimer's disease.!
Gan Chau
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Wrong use of the word "Impact"
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2 comments:
Gan Chau,
This is a wonderful article on the use of the English language! Thanks!
On that note, how important do you think it is to use proper English in communications?
One of the key attractions for blogs, for example, is that it should be written in conversational English. When I read up about sales copywriting, and I have also been advised to "write as I speak", not what my English teach taught me. ;)
Perhaps there are times for proper English and times for more a more informal prose?
The English language is indeed very hard to master.
My work mates and I constantly discuss the use of words, either correctly or incorrectly by others.
Lately a few discussion that I can remember right now are as follows. Maybe you can provide some insight Choo since you seemed to be very qualified in English.
1) Do the words ironic and ironical mean the same thing. I think our conclusion on this one is that they do.
2) Do the words historic and historical mean the same thing. Our conclusion on this one is that they don't. For example, you can have a historical day (it was in the past hence is history) but it was not a historic day (historic meaning somethig of importance that gets noted down in history for future generations.)
3) Do the words amiable and amicable mean the same thing. Again we said they don't. A person can be amiable (adjective) in nature. But another person can be amicable (adverb) towards you in their manner, but is not amiable in nature.
4) Words that have been used in certain fields where the orginal meaning has been totally destroyed and hence the word misused. For example, the word "deprecated" which normally means disapproval has been used by software engineer to mean software code that is no longer up to date. A total misuse of the word. Patent attorney use this word "sealingly", which isn't even a word. We looked it up in Google and about 2 million hits came up. However, when you deduct patents, there was only about 50 hits. There's probably 50 hits for any other word too that gets mispelt. The word "sealingly" is used to describe the action of sealing something so that it is sealed tightly. So instead of using a few words, patent attorneys just made up this word and they all use it now.
5) The word "showstopper". I saw this word in a project summary document. So I turned to my manager and asked "So what was the great idea someone thought of." He said to me that "showstopper" meant a bad thing, literally something that stops a show. I disagreed with him and said I had heard that word in lots of TV show in regards to a great idea. When we looked it up in dictionary.com, we found that the word originated from Broadway, and meant it was a good thing. The show was so great, that people kept applauding, which stopped the show. However, engineers also used the word, but in the sense that it was such a bad thing that it literally stopped the show from continueing.
Choo, maybe you can address some of these discussions and give your opinion. But the English language is definitely full of traps and confusion. Which means that at work we tend to discuss it a lot since the three guys I work with all have an interest in the English language as well.
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