This is not a mistake. It’s standard usage. And the older of the two meanings, in fact.
“Spit” used where “spat” should be. It annoys me, but thankfully it seems to be just americans that do it.
Naah, you hear it in Australia too.
There are a whole host of things like this that are associated with a certain socio-economic group (things like “I seen” for “I saw” and “I never done nothing” for “I didn’t do anything”) - I don’t like them much, but they don’t really bother me.
It’s the shit like “gifted” for “given” and “birthed” for “born” that gets my goat. That shit is people who know better just… well, just being wankers, frankly.
Indeed, “spit” is standard usage for the past of “spit” in the USA. “Spat” is not unacceptable though.
Doesn’t “gifted” just mean “given as a gift.” I’m not sure what the complaint is exactly; they don’t mean the same thing. “Birthed” is definitely a newer regional thing, but it’s older than my grandparents, and it doesn’t mean “born”, but “gave birth to” , as I’ve always heard it.
The way I hear it (especially on these boards), it just means “given”:
“I was gifted a thing” = “I was given a thing” There’s a perfectly good word already there, and rightly or wrongly, I just get the impression that the “gifted” usage is an atrempt to make the thing more important or profound that it should be - they wouldn’t say I was “gifted” a hamburger, for example.
I think it’s a wank.
When did the transitive verb form of “gift” become controversial? It sounds a little archaic and pretentious, but it’s perfectly acceptable grammar.
Never been to Asia huh?
I don’t know if it was ever really found, to be honest.
Seems like it’s been a verb since before Chaucer, actually, back in the heady days of Middle English. That’s 8/10ths of a millennium.
Poor BrainGlutton. I think he should give up on the grammar rants now and stick to Bush. At least he’s usually right in those. 
BrainGlutton, are you ever going to address the fact that your statement that “loan” isn’t a verb has been shown to be completely wrong, by both descriptive and prescriptive standards? You see now that you were mistaken, right?
Oh, sure. That’s how it’s used. That’s how it’s always been used. But…
[whine]He doesn’t liiiiiiike iiiiiiiiiiiiitt!!![\whine]
Have you not seen these grammar rants before? It just doesn’t fucking matter to these people how language actually works. If some aspect of it displeases them, they are going to whine. “How DARE people speak like their speech communities! Why don’t they speak like I want them to?”
Yes, the usage the OP dislikes is the older meaning, but that argument shouldn’t be necessary. If the people he is referring to are following the rules of their speech community, then who the fuck is he to say that they are ‘misusing’ the language? And, yes, I do even mean things like pronouncing ‘ask’ as ‘aks’. (Oh, and just for the fun of it: It seems that ‘aks’ may be the older pronunciation!)
Remember last year when **Clothahump ** made several ill-advised ops in the pit that were shown to be dead wrong very quickly? Well **BG ** just pulled a Clothahump. 
No need for him to show back up to acknowledge it. He is probably hoping the thread will just sink away.
Jim
Instead of “presently” for “soon,” since people seem to have forgotten it anyway, maybe we should go back to “anon,” and let “presently” mean right now.
You may as well resign yourself, Brain Glutton. Some time ago when I was known on these fora (forums?) as DesertGeezer, I complained about the poor usage of language by news anchors, because I said they should be the stewards of the language. They are, after all, the example that most people follow. I saw myself as a defender of proper usage and a beacon to youth, who could still be taught to speak “properly.”
But I was set upon by an army of Dopers who called me a “grammar Nazi.” “The language is ever-changing,” said they. “You can’t buck common usage.” I guess they were right. Hell, even I sometimes use prepositions to end a sentence with.
This has nothing to do with what the OP complained about, using “loan” as a verb, which is proper usage by any standard. Nobody is arguing it’s OK because it’s used a lot - the word is simply also a verb, as described by every reference anybody in this thread referred to. He was not defending proper use, he was wrongly describing a perfectly proper use as incorrect.
Yeah, how’s that going?
You mean “hay” used to be correct for the singular only? What was the plural then? Hayan?
Probably not as well as hoped.
No. I meant that when I encountered Spanish, hay was both singular and plural. I have no idea what the etymological development might have been. I am simply noting that “there’s” seems to have taken the same sort of position in English, being widely used as both singular and plural, and I note that that development occurred at least 40 years ago (and may easily be older).
So, “loan” is still a perfectly valid verb, right?