Gifted books?

Awful, isn't it? I saw a reference the other day to the "gifting season" !

I think it is American usage as I was once thanked by an American friend for a present I gifted to a baby.
It would be interesting to know if this is another old English usage which has stayed in use in America, like gotten. Funny how we have lost that, but kept forgotten and begotten (and indeed misbegotten).

Really irritating. Also, "guesting" and "guested".

My copy of Webster (standard American dictionary – "Morocco bound") says that although gift as verb is unacceptable to some, it has a long history in the English language. My office is currently out of use during redecoration so all my reference books – and me – are stacked in the spare bedroom next door and I can't reach the big Oxford dictionaries which are always good for tracing the roots of words and dates for usage.

I must say, I don't particularly like the use of gift as a verb and think it could be confusing. None of the English English dictionaries that I can reach describes it as a verb.

Chambers does, intransitive verb "to present, give as a gift (espec. Scot)". Blame them

Scream! transitive!!! OMG!! <runs away fast>

I have mentioned before that my dictionaries, even the most recent ones, are probably out of date – as is their owner.

But, doesn't it just mean, which books are most often given as presents?

Would be quite useful to know. And interesting.

Musing - "gifted" (as in "a gifted pianist") is a verbal adjective (gerundive, before more pedantry emerges), is it not? Thus it follows that, as bags has discovered, that there is a verb "to gift".

Doesn't mean we have to like it or use it, of course.

Apart from when doing my TESOL course this is the first time I have come across the word 'gerundive'. What an amazing bunch of erudite people Gransnetters are!

Goes back to my Classics training...sad, the things I remember, but I do like remembering them!

I'd like to remember anything!!

Something that seems to be creeping into common usage is 'passed' as in 'When my father passed'. I always want to ask what he passed?

Soundds a bit lavatorial to me !

Or perhaps "Passed Go and collected £200"?