Please. No “gifting” this Christmas.
I’m not particular sensitive to nouns used as verbs, but this one gets to me. I have consulted my Oxford English Dictionary, and apparently it thinks the fault is mine — it lists a variety of instances in which “gift” was used as a verb from the 17th to 19th century. The OED bids me keep my petty grievances to myself.
But I can’t. The sudden reemergence of the term coincides with a number of other words that have been recycled into verbs — I am tired, also of people being “tasked” with unimportant activities. Wordnik has a list of irritations here, and admittedly, in the debauched wordsmithery of journalism, I am guilty of many sins on this score. “Impact,” for example.
So why do “gifting” and “tasking” irk me so? Perhaps because of what I suspect is the underlying motive in their use. “Gifting” someone sounds so much more self-important than “giving a gift.” Being “tasked” with some trivial occupation gives it the aura of high mission.
But while I’m at it, a recent article I wrote, interviewing literary scholars, turned up these clinkers: One spoke of “foregrounding” different opinions. I had left the passage in my final article, but it made my editor throw up a little in his mouth, so it was deleted. Another scholar spoke of “theatricalizing” such differences.
Perhaps we could “gift” people with a few useful synonyms as gifts this Christmas?
Postscript: Clearly, I am in a minority. A poll showed that most think “whatever” to be the most grating word, followed by “like.” As Jim Erwin commented on my Facebook page: “Fail on currenting. Teh mos def gr8ting spelling now is, like, ‘Whatevs'”
Postscript on 12/22: An interesting, lawyerly p.o.v. from Max Taylor on my Facebook page: “Hoary legitimacy only makes the experience of words we wish would go away worse. Like the Latin ‘nuculum’ in which the embarrassing “nucular” might find refuge.”
December 19th, 2010 at 5:54 am
I’m with you on “gifting.” Plenty of languages, including German, have a verb for “to give as a gift,” and it seems to work for them, but to my native-English ear, “gifting” comes loaded with presumption. If I “give a gift,” the verb is pretty neutral and the object speaks, I think, only to my intention, not to how pleased or displeased the recipient was. By contrast, “I gifted him the book” hints that I objectively did right by the recipient and implies a deliberate act of charity that mustn’t be met with ingratitude. (In a wealthy society, we give things to each other with relative ease; “gifting” is perhaps a way to make the act of giving sound less trite.)
That said, I really like “regift” as a verb; it has a tangy irony about it that suits the minor discomfort that accompanies the deed itself.
December 19th, 2010 at 4:41 pm
Nice point, “regifting” is a cheesy word for a cheesy act….
December 22nd, 2010 at 9:06 pm
If you didn’t know I was a lawyer, would my comment still be lawyerly?
December 23rd, 2010 at 7:28 am
Don’t answer him Cynthia, he’ll tear you apart in the cross-questioning.