The use of gift as a verb is not new, at least according to the Oxford English Dictionary, which lists examples of gift used this way from as early as the 17th century. Yet we’ve seen a number of web comments and blog posts (easily found on Google) indicating that this use of gift peeves people. The main gripes are that gift is inferior to give in the sense to make a present of, and that using gift this way unnecessarily contorts a perfectly good word for use in place of another perfectly good word.
But using the gift verb is understandable when it conveys shades of meaning that the more general give might not get across. For example, if I were to say, “I gave my daughter a kitten,” you might think I decided out of the blue one day to bring home a kitten. But if I were to say, “I gifted my daughter a kitten,” you would know the kitten was probably a gift for her birthday or some other gift-giving occasion. It’s a meaningful distinction.
Of course, I could avoid the issue by saying, “I gave my daughter a kitten for her birthday.” But we can at least conclude that gift works well where hyperconcision is called for. In any case, this use of gift can’t be stopped, and it’s probably not worth the ire.
Examples
Let’s look at a few examples from around the English-speaking world:
This year’s Monday Night Football schedule has not seen fit to gift viewers with watchable games between relevant teams. [Wall Street Journal]
Gifting of Kindle books rose 175 per cent from a year earlier in the period from November 25th to Christmas Day … [Irish Times]
Gifting and drinking go hand-in-hand this time of year, and this ginger syrup recipe fits the bill for both. [National Post]
In 1919, he gifted one-third of his Kodak stock — worth roughly $10 million at the time — to employees. [Stuff.co.nz]
