My thanks to Brent Przybus of Xilinx for a great new Americanism - the word 'impactful'. Impactful is a pearl of the genre: you know immediately what it means, it's useful, and it's a concise way of saying: 'it has impact'. One word instead of three, an obvious meaning, and it serves a purpose - the three qualities of a top-flight Americanism.
The Americanism has a long and distinguished history. Some 40 years before Oscar Wilde opined that Britain and the USA were 'two nations divided by a common language', John Russell Bartlett, who served as Rhode Island's Secretary of State, published his 1848 'Dictionary of Americanisms' aimed at recording 'the colloquial language of the United States'.
I have a soft spot for productise. It sounds awful, but it succinctly encapsulates the process by which concept, design, prototype, simulation, verification, test etc combine to realize a manufactured product.
Stuart McIntosh, former COO at Philips Semiconductors and President of ASML, once fell foul of the Prince of Wales by using the word 'facilitised' on a fab tour. Pulled up by HRH, McIntosh had the chutzpah to claim: "It's an old Scottish word Sir". Big Ears wasn't fooled.
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Comments (1)
I'm afraid America's ideas on word construction are anathema to me; I still wince at split infinitives.
Their insistance on using "billion" when they mean "milliad" is even more annoying; whenever I hear someone use billion, I get my own back by asking which one they mean!
Posted by Peter Smith | July 1, 2009 6:31 PM
Posted on July 1, 2009 18:31