Allegedly, George Bush said this to a British reporter in 2002, before his summit meeting with Tony Blair. I can’t find the original source, though.
Can anyone confirm the original source for this quote?
I can’t find that exact quote, but you can search here for a few of his misuses of the word “nuance.”
See, this is why I’ll never really get ahead in life.
When I’m in a meeting, and some very important person uses nuance this way, or says that group A and group B “will have to dialog on this set of issues that are impactful” or other nonsense, I get a look in my eye that even those most moronic of bosses recognizes as not particularly respectful.
One of the wonderful things about English is our ability to turn nouns into verbs and vice versa and make them instantly recognizable. I know it drives the grammarians crazy but it works for the rest of us.
I think “to nuance” is actually pretty convenient in an informal way. I will agree with j.c. that I’d start to tune out people talking about “issues that are impactful”.