Hear a radio DJ's very strange on-air experience during huge 1965 blackout

[vaughnmarlowe]

As a rule, dictionaries don’t advocate usage preferences.

[TimmoWarner]

I remember that!

That’s the one with the phone cops, right?

[L_Mariachi]

There’s advocating and there’s observing. They don’t order definitions arbitrarily. Idiotic business jargon notwithstanding, the physical meaning of “impacted” remains the prevalent one.

[Drew_G]

That doesn’t mean using it as in “an event that impacted people” is incorrect usage in any way.

[L_Mariachi]

1. The quibble was with @nungesser’s dictionary having it as the first definition and 2) it’s incorrect only in that ninety percent of the time it sounds like the speaker is trying to use fancy words to appear literate, when affected would have meant precisely the same thing. It’s the type of usage that’s very popular among cops and executives.