Latest News

As a public service announcement to the high-tech and public relations communities, I'd like to remind people that the word performant is not an adjective (and hardly a noun). Here's what dictionary.com says:

 Main Entry:     performant
 Part of Speech: noun
 Definition:     a performer
 Etymology:      based on informant, etc.

Here's an example of correct usage:

In Gigli, brain-melting dialog was delivered by the miserable performant Ben Affleck.

Here's another:

The Gecko layout engine in Mozilla-based browsers is a superior performant to the previous engines.

Please do not use the word as an adjective. The following usage is as wrong as an eighteen dollar bill:

My 401k portfolio is sufficiently performant to afford me early retirement.

Former NSC head, Alexander Haig would often talk in tortured locutions, broken analogies and spoonerisms. Don't be like Alexander Haig. Find the right word for the right job.

Of course, you could always eschew the word entirely. It seems to be a neologism. At best, performant is a synonym for performer that conveys no additional information and at worst, it's a word that trips up the reader's eye. No, performant is bad, bad ju-ju.