When did "gift" become a verb?

[maize]

I think that either seamer or seamster would be acceptably in line with English usage traditions. Since neither is common at this point, we can't say that one is more correct.

[Tanaqui]

My goodness. You really do learn something new each and every day, Word Nerd! (And this is certainly a step up from the last word I learned, which was ootheca.)

 

I see your seamer and raise you a seamster: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/seamster

[Guest]

But, that's not the case because it is correct and proper to say "a pair of pants".

 

Of course, there is no singular pant.

 

English is just dumb.

My son was just musing about this last week. He said, "Why do we say 'a pair of pants', or 'a pair of scissors,' when we mean only one?"

[*Lulu*]

And this thread confirms my love for the Hive.

 

Nobody in my offline circle wants to discuss syntax!

[Tanaqui]

Because those words are pluralia tantum. (Circular argument? What's that?)

What can I say -- I still don't like "party" as a verb, but I might be the only one.

[fraidycat]

if you read no other link of mine, you should still read Uncleftish Beholding.

 

 

!

My science education is now complete.

[Cammie]

Hmm, here in India "gift" is often used as a verb.  I always put it down to it being a more British form of the word.  I don't know if that is the case, however.

[Tanaqui]

What can I say -- I still don't like "party" as a verb, but I might be the only one.

 

It's okay to not like something. I mean, there are people who don't like the word "moist". It's a little presumptuous to announce that what you dislike should, ipso facto, be exiled from the language natively spoken by ~350,000,000* other people. Unless you are literally Zombie Samuel Johnson, that is, in which case: Welcome, sir, and please don't eat my brain!

 

(And on topic, party as a verb cites to 1919. Can I use cites in this fashion? Whatevs, just did.)

 

* Source: I googled it, saw a range of numbers, and picked the one in the middle.

[Free]

Hmm, here in India "gift" is often used as a verb.  I always put it down to it being a more British form of the word.  I don't know if that is the case, however.

 

Absolutely. I am surprised by this thread. I have always been taught "gift" is both a verb and a noun.

[Daria]

No. We call them a pair.

I figure a "nice pant", is when you have a hole in your right pant but the left one is nice.

[Orthodox6]

My son was just musing about this last week. He said, "Why do we say 'a pair of pants', or 'a pair of scissors,' when we mean only one?"

 

With a screwdriver, dismantle a pair of scissors.  Hand him one blade and ask him if he can accomplish his task with only the one piece.

 

Just brainstorming. . .

[Ellie]

Absolutely. I am surprised by this thread. I have always been taught "gift" is both a verb and a noun.

 

I never heard it "taught" one way or the other. I only began hearing it used as a verb in the last, oh,25 years (and if you're younger than I, that would make it most of your lifetime). I think it sounds, IDK, pretentious or something. :ack2:

 

Another word I don't like as a verb is "partner." Blech

[poppy]

There is that viral video of Chelsea Handler asking some British celebrity a really dumb question on her talk show (paraphrasing here):

 

Chelsea: I like looking at globes, it's so interesting to see all the different counties. Have you ever heard of Nicaragua?

 

Celeb: Yes, because I was schooled in England.

 

Pretty funny.

People in the U.S. don't use schooled as a verb . Maybe gift as a similar British English thing that's gradually coming here?

[Tanaqui]

People in the U.S. don't use schooled as a verb.

 

Well, some of us do, but not in that context. I wouldn't say schooled in that sentence, I'd say educated, but I might say that Lex Luthor was "schooled in the ways of evil" or something. If I wanted to be fancy.

 

Maybe gift as a similar British English thing that's gradually coming here?

 

Possible. Lemme check the google ngram viewer.

 

In American English, you can see that "gifting" had a definite upturn around 1970. It's really dramatic, actually! If you compare with "to gift", it's a lot less stunning, and results for "she gifted" are mixed - it goes up, it goes down, it goes up again with gifting!

 

Now, let's do the same thing for British English. There's some way to get a chart that shows both, but I can't recall how, so I'm gonna do different charts.

 

British English "gifting"

British English "to gift"

British English "she gifted"

 

Okay. The charts don't all scale the same way, but even a cursory glance will show that their use of those words roughly matches American use - gifting in particular has the same meteoric rise around 1970 as it does in the US. Additionally, a closer look at the numbers shows that for each searchword, Americans appear to use the word more often than Brits.

 

So we can put that hypothesis to bed. Good idea, doesn't fit the facts.

 

However, Ellie will be gratified to know that widespread usage is only slightly newer than she thought. (And on that note, partner as a verb is cited from 1611. However, that usage also seems to have shown a rise in the 1970s. I wonder if we have actually stumbled upon an actual trend here! Quick, everybody, gimme your peevey "when did this become a verb?" complaints, I'll plug 'em in!)

 

[Jennay]

There is a fantastic course by The Teaching Company on this topic that really broadened my understanding (and enjoyment) of all the crazy ways language develops.

http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/story-of-human-language.html

[Laura Corin]

Hmm, here in India "gift" is often used as a verb.  I always put it down to it being a more British form of the word.  I don't know if that is the case, however.

 

Agreeing with Tanaqui: I don't think it's British.  I didn't hear it as a child - in fact, the first time I came across it repeatedly was on these boards, so that would be from the early noughties onwards.

[Vida Winter]

Just add it to my list of 1001 pet peeves. :lol:

[maize]

So I was amusing myself driving home from gymnastics thinking of all the things I wouldn't be able to do if nouns could not be verbs.

 

I couldn't:

 

Cartwheel across the lawn

Microwave a bag of popcorn

Scroll down this page

Gear up for a new school year

Bike to the store

Spoon soup into my bowl

Elbow my friend

Trumpet my excitement

Buckle myself into the car

We couldn't bus children to school

My cat could not tree a squirrel

 

eh, this list could go on and on. Could I even list things out?

 

Of course, it goes the other way too:

 

Can I take a cruise?

Watch a herd of sheep?

What about a drove of cattle?

Race in a race?

Go on a walk?

Take a dive?

Do squats?

 

 

 

 

[Tanaqui]

Aha! I have figured out how to get them in one chart!

 

So, yeah, it's definitely not a Brit thing.

[Laura Corin]

Lots of verbing here:

 

http://www.shakespeareswords.com/Functional-shift

[Ravin]

But, but, but.. Why is a single item expressed in plural form? Pants and shorts seem to defy common English language rules.

This probably has to do with the various points in history when pant legs were separate garments fastened together with a cod piece and held up with garters or by fastening them to a waistcoat.

[Ravin]

I prefer gave over gifted. If you must use the word gift, why not say, "It was a gift from my mother" rather than "My mother gifted it to us." I can't stand irregardless. But overall I'm fine with evolving language. I find it kind of arrogant to think that language, which is a living and changing thing, somehow became perfect at some particular point and should no longer be changed. :)

There is a difference in meaning. Gave is broader, while "gifted" clearly means given as a gift--and conveys that meaning with more brevity.

[Word Nerd]

My nose still turns up whenever I come across "transitioned," no matter how many times I see it.

[Minerva]

I am always annoyed when I hear someone use the word home when the word house would be perfectly fine. It seems like some time in the nineties people started saying, "We just purchased a new home." It feels like newspeak to me, like a sales pitch that took over. Other than that pet peeve, I generally like the evolution of language.

[Daria]

I am always annoyed when I hear someone use the word home when the word house would be perfectly fine. It seems like some time in the nineties people started saying, "We just purchased a new home." It feels like newspeak to me, like a sales pitch that took over. Other than that pet peeve, I generally like the evolution of language.

 

It bothers me, as an apartment dweller, when people use the word "home" as a synonym for "house".  I'm fine with "purchasing a new home" if you mean a house, or a condo, or whatever, but sometimes I hear people say "He lives in a home, not an apartment" and what they mean is "they live in a single family house".  Maybe I'm sensitive, but the idea that the rented apartment that I share with my son is less of a "home" than the places other people live is annoying.

[Guest]

It bothers me, as an apartment dweller, when people use the word "home" as a synonym for "house". I'm fine with "purchasing a new home" if you mean a house, or a condo, or whatever, but sometimes I hear people say "He lives in a home, not an apartment" and what they mean is "they live in a single family house". Maybe I'm sensitive, but the idea that the rented apartment that I share with my son is less of a "home" than the places other people live is annoying.

Weird. i don't think I have ever thought of "home" as exclusively meaning a single family house. I can't imagine using it as a differentiation from an apartment. Sounds so classist. Home is where you stay, not the style or shape of the building. My kid's dorm room is her home for the time being. :)

[Wolfmeis]

Ah. But if that's the case why bother spending time with things like vocabulary and grammar? Why not just use words the way we feel like using them and be rid of the rules altogether?  (Ok. Starting to feel a panic attack coming on. Deep breath. Deep breath.)

 

Many people do that, for just that reason, and it stresses me out.   I love language, and while I don't mind using the vernacular in casual speech, I want the formal language to also be in use.

[Tanaqui]

So long as we have formal situations, we will have formal speech (and also formal clothes, and formal manners, and formal terms of address).

 

And of course, you can always speak with a broad vocabulary, or a technical one, or a aureated one, even as you speak in a less formal register. I can't believe I didn't catch that before, but it's really an incorrect assumption that a person who speaks less formally, or who uses a nonstandard dialect, must therefore not have a very well-developed vocabulary (and might therefore be assumed to be a bit dim). It's incorrect, and more than a little classist.

 

The real sign of linguistic giftedness is not somebody who always speaks with a thesaurus in their mouth, in a very formal register. Take it from somebody who actually does this, and has done so her whole life. It's a speech deficit that no school ever caught or recognized, and that I'm sure not one adult when I was growing up would ever have recognized as a disability, but it really was one. It really affected my ability to socialize with my peers, or to be understood by others. Somebody who really understands language is able to tailor their speech and writing to the audience - to know the right vocabulary and the right register to use, to switch dialects as needed.

 

Always speaking formally, always using an unusual vocabulary does not gain you any friends, nor does it help you to influence people. It just makes you incomprehensible to a large swathe of the population, if you're lucky. If you're not lucky, they don't just assume that it's not lack of skill that causes you to speak the way you do, but a deliberate desire to distance yourself from them.

 

I don't really mean to attack that comment, and now I've done so twice, so I'll answer the question directly. If your grammar books are prescribing a certain form of speech to be used at all times, then it is probably a waste of time to study them. If your grammar books are unclear on what a passive is, or if they give vaguely unhelpful advice that a careful study shows they break all the time (like "avoid adverbs"), then it is probably a waste of time to study them. As for vocabulary, broadening your vocabulary is a laudable goal, but towards that end it's probably better to read a lot. Certainly it's more enjoyable. (So says a girl who likes to read the dictionary for lulz, but you know, you do you.)

[annandatje]

It has always been a verb and is frequently used in estate planning information.  It has a more precise meaning legally than its synonym "give." 

[ashfern]

I agree. I think it's fascinating to watch language change. And I'm not sorry we aren't still speaking in thees and thous.

 

Thees and thous are the reason I can't stand the King James version of the Bible.

[maize]

Thees and thous are the reason I can't stand the King James version of the Bible.

May I ask why? Is it difficult to understand, or does it feel too archaic, or perhaps too formal? (Thee and thou are informal pronouns, but I think their disuse in modern speech can make them feel formal and stuffy to some.)

 

I'm just curious, I think KJV language is lovely but also see value in more contemporary translations.

[Bluegoat]

Most of the time when words bug me it is because they seem to be corporate speak or jargon.  I tend to resist those kinds of words.

 

I do really love language to have a plurality of forms - I love dialects based on region or class, and more and less formal types of speech, and technical or work related speech (that isn't jargon.)  I find though, that insensitivity about speech is as bad for these forms as being too insistent on everyone using the RP is.  Both seem to move towards a kind of bland uniformity.

 

I also hate turns of phrase that are just idiotic or wrong in a bad way. The two I hate most are "on the ground" - often used by journalists and almost always  superfluous and intended to make them sound like they know about the military when they probably don't; and "begs the question" to mean raises the question, which takes a very useful idea and makes it into a less useful one. 

 

I do actual like "for all intensive purposes" though, and rather wish it could be used.  It gives me a great visual image of a person with  very focused attention, like someone trying to pass a kidney stone.

 

[Veritaserum]

I know "gift" as a verb has long been in use, but it fell out of common usage and was replaced by "give." I loathe "gift" as a verb for anything less grand than an endowment or a hospital wing. It sounds pretentious to my ear otherwise.

 

"My mother gifted me a new shirt for my birthday." *cringe*

"My mother gave me a new shirt for my birthday."

 

"Gift" as a verb is all over advertisements in recent holiday shopping seasons. I hate it. It sounds ridiculous to say someone "gifted" you a pair of socks.