impacted
Americanadjective
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tightly or immovably wedged in.
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Dentistry. noting a tooth so confined in its socket as to be incapable of normal eruption.
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driven together; tightly packed.
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densely populated or crowded; overcrowded.
an impacted school district.
adjective
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(of a tooth) unable to erupt, esp because of being wedged against another tooth below the gum
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(of a fracture) having the jagged broken ends wedged into each other
Other Word Forms
- nonimpacted adjective
- unimpacted adjective
Etymology
Origin of impacted
First recorded 1675–85; obsolete adjective impact (from Latin impāctus, past participle of impingere “to fasten, cause to collide, strike,” equivalent to im- “in” + pag-, variant stem of pangere “to drive in, plant firmly” + -tus past participle suffix) + -ed 2; see im- 1, impinge
Explanation
If your doctor tells you that something is impacted, that's not a good thing. It means wedged together and unable to move. Wisdom teeth are often impacted, which makes one question how wise they actually are. A fractured bone can be impacted as well, which means the two broken ends are wedged together. Perhaps you could say that your Christmas stocking is so jam packed and impacted with goodies that you can barely pull anything out — but that's about the only non-painful association with the word imaginable.
Vocabulary lists containing impacted
This Week In Words: October 5–11, 2019
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Top Ten Most Relevant Words from the Third Republican Debate, October 28, 2015
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Vocabulary from the Eleventh Republican Debate March 3, 2016
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The PC business is being badly impacted by a global memory shortage that is driving up prices, and analysts see first-quarter sales to this end market slipping by 7% from the year before.
From Barron's • Apr. 23, 2026
“This is driven by the current competitive environment, which is impacted by stagnant market demand, price pressure, and increasing constraints on cost competitiveness,” it said.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 22, 2026
Anthropic said in a blog post that growing at such a pace is placing an “inevitable strain” on its infrastructure, which has impacted reliability and performance for both free and paid users.
From MarketWatch • Apr. 20, 2026
Children are profoundly impacted by hunger, with consequences for mental health and development, among other things, extending far past childhood.
From Slate • Apr. 19, 2026
Rather than normal meal kits, most of the food was cubed protein bar material, which would still be edible even if Iris failed to deploy its tumble balloons and impacted at incredible speed.
From "The Martian" by Andy Weir
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
