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Impact
With apologies to Vietnam, Watergate, and Iran, the most certain sign that modern civilization is going to hell is its invention of IMPACTFUL. The earlier arrival of the verb TO IMPACT, rather like that of Rosemary's baby, was a birth so diabolical as to herald an imminent and near-universal perdition. Today, finding an evaluation in which nothing is IMPACTED would rank with bagging a live platypus.
IMPACTED was, in fact, the only form in which a verb "to impact" ever appeared for some four centuries. IMPACTED was useful for hundreds of years in geology, surgery, and a few other fields where things were frequently jammed in between, or up against, other things. Otherwise, IMPACT went about only as a noun, meaning, in the succinct definition of the Oxford English Dictionary, "the striking of one body against another; collision."
But the word proved restless in a restless century, and soon traveled far from home. It has by now lost any trace of precision, and lately seems to refer indiscriminately to anything that has any effect whatever on anything else.
Incent/Incentivize
The useful word "incentive" comes into English from (appropriately enough) the most alluring origins. Its Latin root, incinere, past participle incentus, means "to intone," or "to sing to"-suggesting that the lilt of a lover's serenade (no doubt under a balcony, surely by moonlight) may have been Western civilization's first intentional incentive. Would that all incentives had remained so sweet.
The word has come a long way from the twilit Veronese cobblestones, nowadays turning up most often amid the tedium of construction contracts, economics texts, and labor negotiations. But then, many things that began in the moonlight end up losing their luster by and by. We would have wasted no sympathy on "incentive" on those grounds, had this charming little word not been kidnapped, abused, and sold into slavery in the past ten years, forced to play a verb and do the work of (far less tuneful) words like "encourage," "induce," and "pay."
Lately, you will find this erstwhile troubadour either painted in the cheesy makeup of INCENTIVIZE or stripped almost naked and forced to go about as INCENT. Both words now turn up everywhere among the writings of social scientists, public officials, and the scribes of philanthropy.
"Inclusiveness
“Through its grantmaking and convening with nonprofit leaders,” a regional philanthropy announces on its Web site, “the foundation discovered a widespread community interest in developing a deeper understanding of how inclusiveness of diverse voices and experiences enhances and expands the work of nonprofits.” We have no choice but to trust the accuracy of this surprising revelation: The community in question (a major metropolitan area, not a secluded retreat for social theorists) apparently has a “widespread interest” in “developing a deeper understanding” of INCLUSIVENESS. Whether this community has any interest in actually including anyone is an unexplored question. Its interest, as far as a reader can tell, is merely in understanding how inclusiveness enhances things. It’s hard to resist the thought that this is a community where way too little is going on. But who are we to judge?
In any case, the foundation has marched boldly ahead to form an “inclusiveness initiative,” complete with steering committee, convenings, and a recommended list (you knew this was coming) of inclusiveness consultants. Elsewhere, another large regional foundation has a similar initiative called “Embrace Inclusiveness,” which exhorts “organizations and businesses” (note that the latter are included even if they are disorganizations) “to embrace the demographic changes” in this region, which elsewhere are described as creating “a more effusive ethnic, cultural, religious, and lifestyle setting.” The malapropism here is especially unfortunate. The use of “effusive” (“unrestrained or excessive in emotional expression; gushy” according to The American Heritage Dictionary) might strike one as touching dangerously on stereotypes of some of the ethnic and cultural groups in question. Fortunately, we learn at the end of the sentence that this excessive emotionalism does not apply to any of those groups, but merely to the setting, whose very hills and prairies evidently gush forth lifestyles, like the fountains of paradise.
It would be fine to have a laugh at the expense of all this inclusiveness, were it not for the important ideas being held incommunicado behind a fortress of weird vocabulary. The organizations cited here are trying, in their different ways, to bring groups of people into activities from which those groups have been left out. The effort may be aimed at correcting a social wrong or simply improving some activity by bringing more people (and their perspectives) into it. Either way, if the groups to be included were named explicitly, and if there were some specificity about how their exclusion is to be ended, and why, then an important social and practical purpose would no doubt be served. And people would probably want to read about it and learn from it.
But when the allegedly excluded people are obscured behind sweeping banners like “cultural and lifestyle groups” (which is obviously code for something unstated), and when the activity being promoted is gauzed over with empty feel-good expressions like “embrace this,” practically all meaning is lost. Rather than focusing on what needs to be done to include whom, readers are encouraged to dwell instead on the self-congratulatory piety of those who espouse INCLUSIVENESS. Are these “inclusive” organizations urging us to hire, elect, and solicit views from members of certain ethnic groups, women, gays, or some combination? If so, why do they seem so embarrassed about saying so? The problem isn’t the term inclusiveness itself, which is tired and overused but not completely meaningless. The problem is the uncompleted thought: Include whom? In what? Why?
Some organizations do manage to use the fashionable jargon and then promptly clarify it with specifics. An engineering group affiliated with the National Science Foundation, for example, starts off with calls for an “inclusive environment” but then helpfully adds that “engineering education must be made more open to women and underrepresented ethnic minorities, since their contributions would strengthen the enterprise.” Thanks to that clarification, we now know which groups are to be solicited and why. It’s also clear from context that the people who need to do the soliciting include educators, admissions officers, and professional groups, at a minimum. That is more than enough information to make us forget the gushy jargon and concentrate on what needs to be done.
Infrastructure
As early as 1950, Winston Churchill was already bewailing the migration of this esoteric term from engineering into the whole realm of human designs. "In this debate," he complained in the House of Commons, "we have heard the usual jargon about the 'infrastructure of a supra-national authority.'" (Not only has the jargon not changed in half a century, but apparently neither has the prime topic of debate in the House of Commons.)
Churchill's comment not only took aim at jargon but cleverly poked fun at a subtle absurdity, as well: the "infra" in INFRASTRUCTURE means "below," and it's the opposite of "supra." "Supra-national infra-structure" would seem to describe whatever lies below the things that rise above nations.
INFRASTRUCTURE'S Latin roots strictly mean what lies beneath (or within) things that are built. In that sense, steel girders and wooden beams are infrastructure. Subways and sewer pipes, too. It's harder to understand why a bridge qualifies as infrastructure, though civil engineering does seem to classify a soaring span as if it were just a piece of undergirding that managed to climb into full view-like the underpants defiantly hiked above the belts of modern teenagers.
The problem with INFRASTRUCTURE is that, as metaphors go, it is often a good one-too good by half. Yes, many organizations do need to improve the hidden, back-office functions that are the bureaucratic equivalent of beams and girders. New projects usually do need offices, computers, phone lines, bank accounts, technical advisers, and contractors-all the mundane rigmarole that stands behind a successful effort. The word fits those usages, but it fits a great many others, too. Everything, one presumes, would benefit from the strengthening of some hidden component parts. Is everything, therefore, an infrastructure project? Ever since Churchill's day (and evidently for some time before that), the word has been applied metaphorically to so many things that it is now quite impossible to know which thing it is supposed to invoke in any given context.
Used sparingly, in situations where some kind of construction or engineering is under way, the word still has some frail integrity left. But in most cases, it is simply a grandiloquent stand-in for "component parts," "elements," "organization," or, in management circles, "administrative functions." Clarity would usually be served best by saying just which of those things is meant.
Initiative
Gone, we presume, are the days when parents clucked at their children, "You lack initiative!" Surely no one lacks initiative anymore. INITIATIVES are everywhere, common as crabgrass. Practically every police station has an anti-drug initiative, churches have youth initiatives, city halls have clean-streets initiatives, and California civic groups cook up ballot initiatives by the score for every Election Day. But no one has more initiatives than foundations-at least one, it seems, for every area of human endeavor.
To be fair, the word attracts more derision among editors and other language watchdogs than it deserves. It is most often used merely as a synonym for "effort," "activity," or "project." It is pretty much a fair trade for any of those words, which are themselves fairly vague and unambitious. Whether something is called "The Welfare Project" or "The Welfare Initiative" is really a matter of indifference.
INITIATIVE is not really jargon at all, in fact-it wears its meaning (minimal as that may be) on its sleeve, with nothing deceptive or obscure or falsely implied. It is really just jargon's humbler cousin, a cliché. We include it here mostly because, as clichés go, INITIATIVE has turned into something of a juggernaut, and to many foundation writers and editors, it is becoming annoying. There are, after all, other perfectly good terms that boast less tentative meanings than INITIATIVE-which the American Heritage Dictionary defines as "a beginning or introductory step; an opening move." But those other words-"project," "venture," "drive," "enterprise"-are in overly wide use already, and most lack the sheer pluck of INITIATIVE.
Anyone who comes up with a good alternative is sure to be hoist onto the shoulders, metaphorically at least, of communications staff in foundations everywhere. Meanwhile, though, INITIATIVE is here to stay.
Intensive
The usual meaning of this word (when it has one at all) is "more than the norm." As in: "the curriculum consists of four weeks of intensive training"-presumably a welcome reassurance to students that, in those four weeks, they will not be getting the school's customary casual and nonchalant training. When papers describe intensive services, collaboration, staffing, follow-up, and the like, they seem to be referring to something superhuman and remarkable. But they could very well be talking about merely making a better-than-average effort. The word provides no way of knowing. Because it means nothing in particular but carries a self-flattering aura, a careful reader will view the word more with suspicion than admiration. (The same, by the way, goes for IN-DEPTH, whose meaning is pretty much the same as INTENSIVE, though the hyphen makes it jauntier.)
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