Gifting and giving

And how and why they're not the same

Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash

Dan Nguyen, of Brooklyn, N.Y., writes: “I’ve heard various arguments about the use of the word gifted, as in ‘She gifted me a subscription to Barbara Wallraff’s Substack.’ It seems to be in more common use these days, and it always sounds a bit off to me, but there may be a nuance I’m missing.”

Dan, I suspect the nuance you’re missing is that the speaker or writer finds the verb gift trendier than give and considers that a good thing. I am reminded of a post from last October about thrift as a verb.

But there’s more to it than that. In fact, both gift and give have a long history as verbs, and there is a little-known traditional distinction between them. Stephen L. Carter, a Yale Law School professor, gives (not gifts!) a better explanation of this than I possibly could:

The use of “gift” as a verb has ancient roots. Everyone who puzzles over this conundrum points out that the Oxford English Dictionary attests this usage as early as the 16th century. True enough. The OED lists early examples aplenty. But these early examples share a vital aspect that's been left unremarked by the commentators. Once we understand that aspect, we'll understand why our current fad for “gifting” is misguided.

The oldest citation is from a British poem, “A Merry Jest of a Shrewd and Curst Wife Lapped in Morel’s Skin,” probably published around 1550 and believed to have provided the foundation for “The Taming of the Shrew”: “The friendes that were together met He gyfted them richely with right good speede” — “He” in this case meaning “God.” Among the OED's many other examples we find a 1639 reference to “a parcel of ground which the Queen had gifted to Mary Levinston” and an 18th century reference from Henry Fielding to “the Inspiration with which we Writers are gifted.”

But notice what they have in common. The queen already owned the parcel before gifting it; she did not acquire it in order to make a present of it. As for Fielding, he is referring to a natural-born quality, gifted if at all by God — precisely the point being made by the unknown author of “Morel's Skin.” Nearly all the OED'’s early examples involve either a giver who gifts what the giver already owns, or a situation in which the giver is Nature or God.

This distinction is subtle but important. There's a world of difference between gifting a thing you already own and going out to buy a thing you don't. As it happens, the distinction is also consistent with the traditional usage in law. Every case I have found prior to the 20th century that uses “gift” as a verb refers to a transfer of an asset that the giver already owns. Most involve inheritance. (Quite a few, I sorrow to report, involve slavery, for the courts in the antebellum South adjudicated many a dispute over the ownership of human beings.) Similarly, books published in the 19th century overwhelmingly reserve the usage for gifts either from God or from the giver's existing assets.

Thus if a sentence like “He’s a gifted musician” (meaning he has God-given talent) sounds fine to you, whereas “Everyone at his birthday party gifted him” (meaning everyone bought and brought him a present) sounds off, you’ve absorbed that traditional distinction without even realizing it.

Email me with your language questions, peeves, problems, etc., at barbaraswordshop@gmail.com, and I’ll respond as soon as I can. Correspondence may be edited. If you subscribe to The Boston Globe, look for my column, “May I Have a Word,” in the Ideas section every other Sunday.