impacted

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of impact.

   The merger impacted thousands of workers within a few months.

   Budget cuts impacted school programs throughout the district.

   Note

   One form serves as both past tense and past participle: it impacted, it has impacted, it was impacted. The verb's literal senses are physical. It can mean striking, or packing something tight, which is the idea behind the dental meaning. Its figurative use for 'strongly affected,' as in budget cuts impacted programs, is frowned on in careful usage. In formal writing, affected or hit is the safer choice.

2. 2
   adjective

   Marked or affected by a forceful collision or blow.

   The impacted metal showed a clear dent where the rock had struck.

   Scientists studied the impacted soil around the meteorite crater.

   Similarhit, damaged

   Oppositeuntouched, undamaged, intact

3. 3
   adjective

   Of a tooth, wedged in the jaw or under the gum so that it cannot emerge into its normal position.

   The surgeon removed an impacted molar that had grown sideways.

   Her lower wisdom teeth were impacted against the second molars.

   Similarwedged, embedded, stuck, lodged, trapped

   Note

   Dentists say a tooth erupts when it breaks through into the mouth, and an impacted tooth is one that fails to. Wisdom teeth are the usual case because they are the last teeth to erupt, so 'impacted wisdom tooth' is the phrase most readers meet. The condition is called impaction. Unlike the everyday adjective, this is a clinical yes-or-no description rather than a matter of degree.

4. 4
   adjectiveUS

   Of a local district, having lost property tax revenue because of a federal presence, making it eligible for federal impact aid.

   Congress increased payments to impacted districts near large military bases.

   The impacted school system relied on federal aid to cover its annual budget.

   Note

   A term of US federal budgeting, tied directly to the impact aid program. Districts, schools and communities are its usual partners, and it can be graded: the Congressional Record of 2000 speaks of 'one of the most highly impacted schools in the Nation.' Read it as a funding category with a precise meaning, not as a loose synonym for affected.

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