Jeff's Junk

It is an adjective in French, in which it means exactly what it's intended to mean in the quoted sentence.

I've always been wondering what's the correct word in English. Does one exist?

Should we write "speed efficient" or something?

I guess that means it has taken over from "do".

The excessive use of "do" in place of the actual verb drives me crazy but it seems to have become less abused in the last year or 2.

eg "I'm going to do an article" instead of "I'm going to write an article"

Most words enter the lexicon in this manner, someone made will "make it up" and use the newly created word in context that other people can understand and it spreads.

Ginormous wasn't a word until someone put together "gigantic" and "enormous", but alas, people know what it means and it is in the dictionary now after being commonly used.

Is something being "performant" any more ridiculous than to "google" something else?

In Dutch it's an adjective as well.

Even if it's not in the English dictionary, I like it. People know what you're talking about, and as stated by Fabrice, there's no better alternative that i can think of.

In French, "performant" does not mean "efficient". The word for "efficient" is "efficace".

Performant is an adjective that qualifies the performance of something or someone (in French at least). Efficient qualifies the efficiency of something or someone.

Still in French, one may say that something is performant if it has a high efficiency.

No, that would be "leverage," every time I hear that word I feel like throwing up... like right now.

Jeff,

Efficient has a different undertone (to me at least, maybe because of my Dutch mother tongue?).

I would use performant to describe technical things, optimized for speed and performance; whereas with efficient, I think of a well thought-out user interface...

My mind:

- Performant: technical

- Efficient: functional

It's nitpicking though, as long as everyone knows what you're talking about, right? :)

Well, words only become words when enough people use them to describe something.

I would guess that performant would break into webster pretty soon.

Speaking of made up words: refactor isn't a word either, but everyone uses it/knows what it means.

Dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive.  All words were made up at one time or another.

Well, I need it for describing a "highly performant" grain unloading equipment.  I don't believe that any word would convey the meaning as efficiently as "performant".   I am talking technology, speed, action and quality here.  I am not afraid to use it in my translation pertaining to the technical domain,  although, or maybe especially because I am a linguist.

Performant is not a synonym for efficient. Race cars are performant, but they are not efficient. If high efficiency cars are efficient, why wouldn't high performance cars be performant?