impact

I have received a nomination for the most overworked and irritating word of 2019.  The nomination is for impact as a transitive verb. Whereas things used to impact on us, now they impact us.  We have moved a long way from the original use of impact which is, interestingly, a backformation from impacted. It seems that English borrowed directly from the Latin impactus, the past participle of impingere meaning to drive or strike against, just adding the –ed suffix as a form of Anglicisation.  So an impacted wisdom tooth is one driven against the other teeth. 

 The backformation impact in its first appearance (in the early 1600s)  was transitive and meant ‘to wedge or pack something in’.  By the end of the century it was being used as a synonym for impress.  

 It was not a word that had very high frequency even in its 20th century use meaning  ‘to come forcibly into contact with’.  Something impacted on my body with a thud.

 Then the Americans converted it from an intransitive verb to a transitive one with the meaning ‘to affect’. This will impact me badly.

 The state of play now is that half the people you talk to maintain that the intransitive use is correct and the transitive use is wrong.  The other half do the opposite.  This is one of those bits of language change that arouses strong feeling.

 Personally I would not use impact transitively, but only because I have been taught that the intransitive use is correct and that impact must be followed by on (most commonly) or against or some suitable preposition.  I do not regard the people who use impact transitively as being beyond the pale, but I am not inclined to follow them.

 And I can quite understand the irritation of my correspondent.  Google Ngram shows a marked increase in the frequency of use of impact from the middle of the 20th century, rising steeply in the final decades of that century and into the 21st.  So, for us intransitive impact people, our noses are being rubbed in it.