I was trying to think about why I don't like "impactful" and "concretize" when I ran across this piece that articulates it so well.
" I call them "zombie nouns" because they cannibalize active verbs, suck the lifeblood from adjectives and substitute abstract entities for human beings."
"The proliferation of nominalizations in a discursive formation may be an indication of a tendency toward pomposity and abstraction," Sword explains, would be better and more clearly stated as "Writers who overload their sentences with nominalizations tend to sound pompous and abstract." We have to agree. In the de-nominalized format, too, we get an active rather than a passive sentence, something we all typically aspire to achieve." https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2012/07/zombie-words-are-coming-your-brains/325522/
As the above points out, some nominalizations do pass into the language (e.g. cronyism) because they're useful. But beware that employing them tends to make one continue in a passive voice - a style which avoids a deep and personal connection.
"Impactful" avoids saying exactly what the impact was, and upon whom. "The Henry Moore sculpture made a lasting impact on my understanding of the mother-child bond." It takes more words, but allows you to be more expressive and intimate. "Impactful" also tends to invite other passive words into the sentence "The impactful sculpture aggrandizes the role of maternal connection."
