I expect people to be pretentious from time to time and I also expect them to more or less follow the crowd. But this has become a virtual linguistic pandemic in what seems like record time.
I will admit that I’m not completely sure how long I’ve been under my rock and if I’m missing something painfully obvious, I’ll skulk off and try to find an ice floe to die on.
But either way, this is as annoying as psoriasis of the bunghole. Do you win a prize if you use it every . . . single . . . chance you get? If so, I want in on that. Or is it more like and anti-prize? Maybe if you use it a certain number of times per day, you get an extra fat stick lodged up the aforementioned bunghole instead the normal sized one everybody else has. It certainly would make you stick out - in at least some sense.
I’m not sure I understand. If you’re saying that people tend to say “gifting” rather than “giving” these days, it may be a regional thing; I don’t recall ever hearing someone say “gifting”. Maybe they did and I didn’t notice.
I am pretty sure it came as a result of the phrase “re-gifting” from Seinfeld. In that sketch, they refer to a certain present as having been re-gifted because I think they find a tag on it that says to someone else. So if some present can be “re-gifted” if it’s been given again to someone else, well then it follows that a present given for the first time is being “gifted”. It spirals downward from there.
Someone asked me what I would be gifting to my sister this year. Seriously, it was all I could do not to give them a lengthy grammar/word usage lecture. I merely replied that I would be giving her some kitchen stuff and some knitting stuff.
I haven’t had anyone say that to me in person, but I really need a very short but quietly devastating comeback. The thing is though that most of the time I can’t actually do it - but I’m working on that. I’m motivated. :eek:
Haha, the Seinfeld Hypothesis wouldn’t be far off, I’d assume.
I never use gifted as anything other than an adjective, “The gifted student excelled in my math class.”
I see it on facebook sometimes, I think, on those games. “So and so has gifted you a tree to plant on your farm!” Maybe people are picking it up there.
That’s based on an erroneous interpretation- the way I always understood it was that it hadn’t been “gifted” the first time and “re-gifted” a second time, but rather was a gift the first time, and now, had become a gift again, hence “re-gifted.”
If what you describe is actually how the phrase came about, then I’m really dismayed at the stupidity of people.
Apologies. I haven’t been on here regularly for several months and it’s common practice on most other forums. But that’s not an excuse. I’m pleading “guilty with and explanation.” :rolleyes: I was actually more worried about the mind profanity. The editing thing didn’t even cross mind. However it will next time.
I went with “meh” in the poll because I’ve also never heard anyone say “gifting” in place of “giving”. I have sometimes heard the Seinfeldism “re-gifting”, but not just “gifting”.
I really don’t understand why people make a big deal about this. It’s not like synonyms are evil. No one ever complains if someone says bequeath, bestow, donate, endow or grant instead of give. None of those mean exactly the same thing as give does, but then neither does gift. Gift means to give something as a gift. It’s closer in meaning to donate than give.
This. Sure, it grates on my ears, but that’s a sign that I’m getting old and curmudgeonly, not that new usages are bad. As you say, it fills a particular niche that no other word does. Hooray for the evolution of language!
Indeed, as I think of it, I do use both words, but not interchangeably. If it’s a gift giving occasion, like a birthday or Christmas, I give a gift. If it’s not a socially predicated gift-giving occasion, but I’ve made the perfect necklace or found this doodad that must be yours, or especially if there’s something of mine I no longer need/want but you do, I will gift it to you (and if someone else gave it to me first, then yes, it’s a “re-gifting”). I have no idea how this distinction got made in my brain or if it’s in anyone else’s…
I agree it’s annoying. It seems like creeping corporate-speak to me.
If some very popular social app like Farmville used the term, that’d sure give it a boost. People are followers & will mimic the slightest stimulus.
I wonder how much it’s a side effect of nearly every office worker in America carrying their office on their hip and being on-call all the time? I suspect that tends to put their mind in corporate-work-mode every time the email beeps. If so we’d see lots of other corporate-speak entering the nominally off-duty vocabulary.
Unfortunately in popular parlance the distinction you’re positing isn’t being made; half the commercials I’m hearing talk about what you’re “gifting” people for Christmas. I’ve griped about this here before myself. I don’t mind “re-gifting” 'cause it filled a perfectly open niche, but most people are using “gifting” where “giving” always worked just fine and it grates on my ears every time.
You’re welcome.