Note to the World
The plural of “person” is “people,” not “persons.”
I don’t care how much you want it to be.
“Impact” is also not a verb, despite how many government bureaucrats have failed to learn the word “affect.” If you mean it in a physical sense, the verb is “hit.”
Deal with it, people.
December 21st, 2006 at 11:01 am
Impact derives from the latin impactus, which is a form of the verb impingere. There is a long-standing verb form that means “to pack tightly together” as in “impacted bowel”.
There is also a form which is roughly a synonym of “impinge” only with a more forceful connotation - which makes sense based on it’s latinate roots.
December 21st, 2006 at 11:11 am
No no, ‘persons’ is the singular of ‘peoples’
As in:
“I’ve got to stop Don Ignacio from oppressing all the peoples.”
“This persons is happy to hear that, senor Zorro.”
December 21st, 2006 at 11:23 am
No, I’m sorry, but when you abuse something, you get it taken away from you, and “impact” has been abused. Note that “impacted bowel” and other forms are only in adjectival or other forms. “Persons of color are impacted disproportionately by the policy” is just written by someone who needs a basic, and I mean *basic* writing course.
“The policy disproportionately affects people of color.”
December 21st, 2006 at 12:33 pm
OK, but I reserve the transitive verb form for astronomical and astronavigational and other functionally similar events. Such as ‘the probe impacted on the surface’ and ‘don’t make me impact you squah in the nuts.’
December 21st, 2006 at 12:36 pm
Oh, and the reason the impacted-bowel form always seems adjectival in nature (wow, that’s a cool word) is that it’s an intransitive verb for an event that is rarely observed in action, but only detected after the fact.
December 22nd, 2006 at 9:58 am
Nope. This is why people shouldn’t abuse words. You can now say “The probe hit the surface” with no loss of clarity, and of course, “don’t make me put the hizzle on you squah in the nuts” is also quite clear, and makes you seem all tough and stuff.