The verb that traumatizes

In this post-Christmas, post-Hannukah, post-Kwanzaa slow winter slog toward spring solstice a new year is born. It's time to discard old illusions with the used wrapping paper.   

One illusion is that the English we speak is the same as the English we spoke sixty years ago. 

To gift: a newish verb made from a noun, in the late 20th century habit of turning an innocent noun into an untrustworthy verb. 

We used to say "I gave a gift to someone" . So now we say "I gifted": it's shorter, saves you "gave" and "a".  Gifting is swifter. Hey, more time to tweet!  E-mail shortened or eliminated paragraphs and tweets abbreviated sentences. 
Now our verbs are slimming down to fit into the newish bikini of the 21st century.

But according to Merriam-Webster online you can say “he gifted her with flowers”.

And I say you can say "he gave her flowers" as it's shorter, but I'm a hair-splitting  codger.

Pour la petite histoire:
While I was online ordering holiday gifts, I gifted myself (with?) a soap from a fancy website. It arrived along with a couple of items I'd be gifting (to) others. The little soap was for me.
Mistake. 

I'd gifted myself a soap that smells like rose petals marinated in fermented yak piss. 

Perhaps I  shouldn't gift myself during gifting season. 
I should stay off sites with fancy graphics and promises of youth restored.  
Right--I made the mistake because I gifted myself from a website!
In a real, live store you can smell that soap. If it smells like yak piss, you can move on to another specialty soap, such as strawberry in propylene glycol, apple and vanilla with Dead Sea mud, coconut and chocolate in ripe lanolin, organic eggplant with olive oil and thyme. (No wait, that's a recipe).

Your sad skin will rejoice, and so will your nose.

Moral(s):

1) You cannot smell a self-gifted or any other gift-soap online. Yet.

2) Do not look your own gift-horse in the mouth, because it might contain a verb that turns round and bites you in the blog.


"Gift" has a long, illustrious etymological history:

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=gift

gift (n.) 

mid-13c. (c.1100 in surnames), from a Scandinavian source, cf. Old Norse gift, gipt "gift, good luck," from Proto-Germanic *giftiz (cf. Old Saxongift, Old Frisian jefte, Middle Dutch ghifte "gift," German Mitgift "dowry"), from PIE root *ghabh- "to give or receive" (see habit).

For German Gift "poison," see poison (n.). Old English cognate gift meant "bride-price, marriage gift (by the groom), dowry" (Old English noun for "giving, gift" was related giefu). Sense of "natural talent" is c.1300, perhaps from earlier sense of "inspiration" (late 12c.). As a verb from 16c., especially in gifted. As a verb, giftwrap (also gift-wrap) attested by 1936.