Useful vs Impactful - What's the difference?
useful | impactful |
Having a practical or beneficial use.
* {{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=July-August, author=
, title= '', ''useful for '' and ''useful to ''. The words ''useful to'' are also found in construction such as ''It is useful to do'', in which ''to marks an infinitive rather than being a preposition.
Having impact.
* {{quote-book
, year=1950
, year_published=2008
, edition=Digitized
, editor=
, author=
, title=Movies: A Psychological Study
, chapter=
* 1969 , W. James Popham, "Curriculum Materials," Review of Educational Research , vol. 39, no. 3, p. 321:
* 1982 , S. E. Taylor and S. C. Thompson, "Stalking the Elusive 'Vividness' Effect," Psychological Bulletin , vol. 89, no. 2, p. 155:
* 2001 , A. Mukherjee and W. D. Hoyer, "The Effect of Novel Attributes on Product Evaluation," The Journal of Consumer Research , vol. 28, no. 3, p. 463:
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As adjectives the difference between useful and impactful
is that useful is having a practical or beneficial use while impactful is having impact.useful
English
Adjective
(en adjective)Lee S. Langston, magazine=(American Scientist)
The Adaptable Gas Turbine, passage=Turbines have been around for a long time—windmills and water wheels are early examples. The name comes from the Latin turbo'', meaning ''vortex , and thus the defining property of a turbine is that a fluid or gas turns the blades of a rotor, which is attached to a shaft that can perform useful work.}}
Usage notes
* Prepositions: useful'' is used in ''useful forSynonyms
* noteful * serviceable * utilitarianAntonyms
* unuseful * useless * harmfulimpactful
English
Adjective
(en adjective)citation, genre= , publisher=Free Press , isbn= , page=22 , passage=We might suppose that some of the most impactful heroines of current films would combine these two functions: that of the good-bad girl ... }}
- It is strongly recommended that in the future such investigations not be reported in the literature unless they are designed to test the effects of some hopefully impactful treatment variation.
- Everyone knows that vividly presented information is impactful and persuasive.
- A dominant finding in psychology and consumer behavior has been that negative information is more impactful than positive information.
Usage notes
* Proscribed by some authorities, who recommend “influential” or “effective” instead. Alternatively, one may rephrase to “have an impact” or “have a strong impact”. However, many usages can be found, particularly in business and education as well as in journalism and academic writing. * Usage is more common in the US.Synonyms
* effectual, impactiveDerived terms
* impactfully * impactfulnessReferences
Historical usage frequency at Google books