To think that gift is a noun...

[madcatwoman61]

and not a verb - any other pedants out there who get unreasonably annoyed by things like this? Also farewelled.

It is normal that language changes. It is also normal to find some of the more clunky or unappealing changes irritating until they have been settled in familiar usage for a looooong time.

You can be as annoyed as you like, as long as you never make a point of correcting people over it.

To think that google is a verb...

www.outsidethebeltway.com/google-doesnt-want-people-using-google-as-a-verb/

YANBU. Lunch is not a verb either, it's a noun. That sends me batshit.

I don't correct. I inwardly seethe a bit, that's all.

Yes, very true that language changes, and I'm open to that in theory. But at the same time, I find some of the changes irritating, even though I have no choice but to accept that they're here to stay.

I never correct people though. I even managed to bite my tongue yesterday when a friend showed me a piece of home made word art that another friend had made for her (it was a verse from the Bible) and it had a spelling mistake on it. Would have been churlish to piss all over something that had been made with love.

I'd rather someone said gifted than "I gave it you" or any variant of that. No, you gave it to me. To me.

"Shop women's clothing"

YANBU.
Along with medal. I always hear "meddled in the Olympics" which is really not what they are trying to say. Aaargh!!

Shakespeare was one for a neologism. And often used nouns as verbs. It's part of his genius with language, so YABU.

It is normal that language changes. It is also normal to find some of the more clunky or unappealing changes irritating until they have been settled in familiar usage for a looooong time.

I agree. I majored in Linguistics, so I know language changes. How many years before "I should of... " stops making me cringe?

The one that sets my teeth on edge is (normally) historians on TV and radio who speak in the present tense about past events, in some crappy, unnecessary attempt to make history exciting and relevant

Fuck off! I literally have to turn the radio off. I think that makes me a bit of a dick....

I find it quite hard not to correct people. Being an mfl teacher I have spent 20 years correcting people's spelling and grammar. As an aside, when I was studying for a linguistics paper on the change from Late Latin to Old Early French (useful eh?!) we looked at a text which was a list written by a monk of Latin words that people kept getting wrong (i.e. things that were beginning to slide from correct Latin into their eventual French form). Kind of interesting (if you're a language geek ).

"Learnings"......grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. The reason the spellcheck underlines it is that IT'S NOT A REAL WORD (SO DON'T MAKE IT WORSE BY ADDING AN APOSTROPHE!!!)

My dictionary (and not a particularly new one!) lists both gift and loan as verbs as well as nouns.

Fascinating, Eolian

Thanks lovelearning (assuming from ypur username that you weren't being sarcastic ).
It was kind of funny because it was almost like an MN thread of this type. As if the monks were going "Oh don't you just hate it when people these days write X instead of Y. It sets my teeth on edge"!

lovelearning

Almost all dictionaries give the definition of "Google" as "search for information about (someone or something) on the Internet using the search engine Google" rather than "research using a search engine" to stop it becoming a generic trademark.

HATE 'gifted'

To medal - my personal bugbear. I found the olympics excruciating last year.
I understand language changing but this particular change pains me.
Also the dropping of the word to in sentences. I'm going Ibiza, McDonald's etc. Seems to be a millennial thing as it's the interns at work who are most guilty.

PS agree on gift but don't mind regift (no consistency)

AuntieStella

OED lists 'gift' as a verb going back to the 17th century, 'action' since the mid 18th century

Gadzooks - 'tis hard to keep apace with such neologisms!

Another linguist?

Loan is also a verb.

Many of you need to read up on morphological derivation, in this instance, zero derivation. It's when a word is unchanged in the way it's written but can be a different part of speech. House (v. or n.), schedule (v. or n.), or loan(v. or n.) are all examples.

Something linguists know is that language changes and it doesn't matter. I have the following quote in my office.

"Pet peeve of mine: Linguists know that natural language change is not bad for a language. Adopting loan words from other languages, losing inflection, cases, genders, articles and formerly distinct sounds...
This happens in all languages and is nothing to worry about. For a linguist, it's an interesting phenomenon, worth analyzing. For some people it's proof for the demise of language, the end of civilized culture and the beginning of the dying of the proper language. But languages constantly change and this is certainly not how languages die."

Sorry but gift is both z verb znd a noun and has been for centuries. It includes the meaning of giving but also implies a present.

Gift is a strange one to get upset about because the verb "to gift" doesn't mean the same thing as "to give".

I suspect that's why it's stuck as a verb. "Lock" as a verb was new in Shakespeare's time wasn't it? Again, "to lock" is not quite the same as "to fasten" so we (English speakers generally) have kept it.

I loathe gift as a verb. It sounds so American. See also birthing. You didn't birth your kid you gave birth to it!