Peter Jones of the Spectator, quoting George Orwell on the continuing decline of plain English:
“slovenly language and slovenly thinking begin to feed off and reinforce each other: ‘[English] becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.’ ”
If there’s one word in modern usage, not just in the business world but in every day speech, that perfectly sums up the modern preoccupation with silly substitutes, it’s impact.
Instead of making perfectly simple sense by saying that a trend or development will affect or—more weakly—have an affect on us, we feel compelled to make a verb out of a noun: it will impact us.
Now if there’s one thing that developments, patterns and sales projections never do in this life, it’s have an impact.
I know. What a silly waste of time to point out that only meteors and bombs have an impact.