Backformation

Linguists use the term backformation to indicate the creation of one part of speech from another when the first should have followed on the second. A personally egregious example of this is the new use of the verb 'to impact.' There has always been verbal meaning to 'impact' - stuffed into a small space with no exit, e.g. molars, tonsils, colons. But the noun 'impact' means 'effect,' and more recently has come to mean 'greater than normal effect.' With an eye toward making an impact, then, marketers and other business jargon users have created another meaning for the verb impact, 'to affect,' and more to the pragmatic point, 'to affect in a big way.'

Backformation is common, and its enemies tend toward pedantic purism; therefore I pause in my resistance to this instance of the phenomenon. I think what I hate most about it is the laziness with which the jargoneers have latched onto it. Much like with 'amazing,' 'make sense,' and 'throw ___ under the bus,' the problem is not with these words and phrases but with the frequency with which they are used, to the exclusion to all other options. I understand comfort with one's vernacular but vocabularic complacency drives me insane.