You Better Not

It's that time of year, when clichés drift down like snowflakes, disproving the theory that no two snowflakes are exactly alike. Something about the smell of pine needles and the jingle of Salvation Army bells seems to transform otherwise original thinkers into platitudinous hacks. If you write for a living, or hope to, you'd be well advised to heed this Scroogy list of holiday clichés to avoid, compiled by Baltimore Sun copy editors and colleagues and shared by John McIntyre at You Don't Say. My favorites:

"’Tis the season": Not in copy, not in headlines, not at all. Never, never, never, never, never. You cannot make this fresh. Do not attempt it.

"’Twas the night before" anything: 'Twasing is no more defensible than ’tising. (And if you must refer to the Rev. Mr. Moore's poem, if indeed he wrote it, the proper title is "A Visit from St. Nicholas.")

"Yes, Virginia" allusions: No.

"White stuff" for snow: We should have higher standards of usage than do television weather forecasters. Also avoid the tautologies favored by these types: winter season, weather conditions, winter weather conditions, snow event and snow precipitation. And the tautologies favored in advertising: free gift, extra bonus and extra added bonus.

And speaking of gifts, reader Bryan Vartabedian, who writes the definitively titled Parenting Solved blog, alerted me to a Wall Street Journal article by Elizabeth Holmes headlined "Especially During the Holidays, 'Gift' Is a Verb That Just Keeps 'Gifting'." If you're not a subscriber, you may not have access to the article, so here are the pithy parts (email me for more):

The noun "gift" is a popular word, synonymous with "present." But this holiday season, it's cropping up increasingly as an encouraging verb -- as in, to give something to somebody.

Users of Apple Computer Inc.'s popular iTunes online store can "gift" songs and albums and videos to one another. Mondera, an online jewelry retailer, pushes customers to "go ahead, gift her" a diamond. Epicurious.com, a gourmet online food guide published by Condé Nast, features an entire section labeled "Thanksgifting." Gossip Web site TMZ.com reported actress Angelina Jolie "was gifted" a diaper bag after the birth of her daughter.

Despite its seeming acceptance, the verbification of "gift" has sparked a lively debate in some quarters, from grammarians to bloggers. "Using gift as a verb is a sign of stupidity, laziness, and verbal sloppiness," wrote the host of the Web log feh-muh-nist. "We frown on this usage," agreed Pam Nelson, a journalist with the News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., on her blog Triangle Grammar Guide. (The Wall Street Journal also prefers to give rather than to gift.)

Even so, there's a small contingent of supporters -- and they've got some history on their side. "The verb 'gift' is a perfectly good one," declares Barry Leiba in his blog, Staring at Empty Pages. "To be able to use 'gift' as a verb without raising hackles, well, that would be a gift."

As Mr. Leiba notes, the use of "gift" as a verb isn't new. Most dictionaries, including the Oxford English Dictionary, include a definition of the term as a transitive verb. "And," he says, "it's nice to have a word that specifically means 'to give as a gift.'"

Reporter Holmes goes on to quote linguist Geoffrey Nunberg, who says that despite heaps of noun-to-verb precedent (milk the cow, water the grass, and other examples of anthimeria), "to gift" goes too far.

"Nobody ever likes this one," says Mr. Nunberg, who feels it is tainted by commercialism and its overuse in gossip columns and press releases.

What? A holiday allusion ... tainted by commercialism? Yes, Virginia, I'm shocked.

Comments

[Mark Gunnion]

As Calvin once said, "Verbing weirds language."

(That's Calvin of 'Calvin and Hobbes', of course.)

[daveblake]

In German 'gift' is alREADY a verb, also closely related to give. 'ft' is an OE archaic past tense used now mostly as adjectives (bereft, bereaved; cleft, cloven), also as nouns (gift, given; weft, woven; rift, riven, and rivers, which rive the land). It survives intact in 'left', and mutated in 'heft'. For Germans (who have a somewhat different take on giving), 'gibt' means give, and 'gift' means poison.

'Gift' already had legitimacy as a verb before its recent turn, since 'gifted' as in "Drama of the Gifted Child" is a past participle used as an adjective. This sense has the (I think) nicer nuance of the gift that needed no donor (similar to the way we think of a priori 'givens'). Maybe the reason we tend to hate the neologism so much is because we unconsciously resent the way it degrades the pre-existing richer use.

[Nancy Friedman]

Dave--Fascinating comment! I'd known that "gift" = poison in German, but hadn't thought about "givens" and the whole "-ft" issue. Thanks!

[mike]

If they want to rail against some perceived neologism (see also Arnold Zwicky on the "Recency Illusion" [http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002386.html], they should stop picking on "to gift" and get their bloomers all braided about "regifting." Maybe that will channel all their strident venting into a verb that doesn't have, oh, 1000 years of history behind it.

Here's Paul McFedries on same:

http://www.wordspy.com/words/regift.asp

[Nancy Friedman]

Personally, I don't know how we survived without "regift." Thank you, Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza!