[David Rosenthal]

Originally Posted by Maryann Corbett

Don't faint just yet, Janice. Here's an entry copied from Merriam-Webster's Unabridged online (the pronunciation sound file links won't copy, though):

Main Entry: 2 gift Pronunciation Guide
Pronunciation: "
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): -ed/-ing/-s
1 : to endow with some power, quality, or attribute : INVEST <the Lord gifted him with the power of forceful speech>
2 a chiefly Britain : to make a gift of <gifted the money in memory of his uncle -- British Agric. Bulletin> <I hear Her Excellency's gifted the land -- Kamala Markandaya> b : to present with a gift : PRESENT <generously gifted us with a copy -- Saturday Review> <gifted his parents with a television set -- Sydney (Australia) Sunday Telegraph> <gifted her with a large heart-shaped diamond -- Louella Parsons>

I wish there were dates on these examples, and I wish there were usage notes. Here's the note from Fowler's 3d:

gift (verb): Despite its antiquity (first recorded in the 16th c.) and its frequent use, esp. by Scottish writers, since then, it has fallen out of favor among standard speakers in England and is best avoided. On the other hand, gifted ppl. adj 'talented' (a gifted violinist) is standard.

Yeah, as a verb it goes back to the 16th century, but primarily in the sense of "to endow with some power, quality, or attribute," which is where the adjective "gifted" comes from. But as it is used these days as interchangeable with "to give" makes no sense. What is the benefit of saying gift/gifted/gifting over give/gave/giving. I usually don't get to worked up about usage changes, but this one is so needless, it bothers even me. And it is very widespread.

David R.

[David Landrum]

I started hearing people use "gifted" at the college where I used to teach--referring to donors who "gifted" something to the school. It clashed in my ears, but "verbing" words does have an old history, as David D. points out. Another Shakespeare example: In the old morality plays, Herod, king of Israel, was depicted as a loud-mouth buffoon. Hamlet says of the speech of bad actors, "It out-Herods Herod."

dwl

[W.F. Lantry]

Andrew, Richard, Gregory,

Thanks for your comments. I'm a little surprised that my notes were considered at all controversial, as the argument is far from original with me, and can be traced back at least a hundred years (well, 98 to be exact, but I'm pretty sure the ideas were floating around before then.

The argument could be subdivided into three sections: Matter, Manner, and audience. Or perhaps theme, language, and attendance...

On matter: quick, what do Shakespeare, Dante, Chaucer and Boccaccio have in common? They all snagged most of their stories from other, older texts. This may not seem like a 'conservative' practice in some senses of the word, but it would be hard to call it 'revolutionary' or inventive, without invoking some kind of special pleading. One may as well say Ovid was inventive! Now, there's an untenable position...

On manner, which seems the heart of the issue, I simply lean on Pound:

"I am constantly contending that it took two centuries of Provence and one of Tuscany to develop the media of Dante's masterwork, that it took the latinists of the Renaissance, Pleiade, and his own age of painted speech to prepare Shakespeare his tools."

I do strongly agree with both of these claims, and their underlying assumption: that language is a cultural product, that we don't make it up in our heads, that writers are, for the most part, not inventive: that they are simply really good listeners, who consider carefully what they hear, and make good selections from the materials available to them. I do agree we tend to focus on individuals when we study inventive language, but we shouldn't forget that's simply a convenient trope, that their names are ciphers for changes that go well beyond their work.

Audience is also an interesting aspect of this, and I would argue that the audiences for all four have always been fairly conservative, but perhaps that's a discussion for another day. Still, their identities do reflect on any discussion of language choices...

Thanks,

Bill

[Richard Meyer]

Bill:

Well of course no one is born in a vacuum. It goes without saying that Shakespeare was born in England, that he inherited his mother tongue, that he followed the established genre of writing plays in blank verse, that he snatched plots wherever he could, that he this and he that and …

So, what's your point? Not much of one as far as I can see. What you've been saying is not all that controversial; it's just trivial, in my opinion. I find it curious in this discussion that when a particular point about the original or creative language usage of a great writer has arisen and someone supplies specifics that contradict some attitude of yours, you just ignore the point. Borrowing a plot has nothing to do with telling or retelling the story by using language in a new or superlative way. Good writing, as Alexander Pope tells us, is "what oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed."

Your attitude toward Shakespeare makes me wonder if you've read his contemporaries, looked at his writing next to theirs. And it was later admirers, not Dante himself, who added the word Divine to his Comedy. Apparently no one at the time had enlightened them with your view that focusing on exceptional individual creativity and talent when studying literature is simply a convenient trope.

Your seemingly dismissive attitude toward individual writers of genius and their contributions reminds me of that old absurdity: give a monkey a typewriter and enough time to plunk away at the keys and in a few millennia he'll turn out Hamlet by sheer chance.

Richard

[Jan D. Hodge]

"Another nice example from Shakespeare, from Antony and Cleopatra (and certainly not from prose or from a "low" character): 'Those hearts that spanielled me at heels...' "

My favorite, from the same play: "I shall see / Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness / I' th' posture of a whore."

And here are a few of many penned by a poet much admired among Sphereans:

"the moon sheets wall and tree"

"it smalled and died away"
"he darked my cottage door"********both adjectives as noun

"my clothing clams me"

"I was scarce of mood to comrade her"

"whose temple bulked upon the adjoining hill"

"mirrors meant to glass the opulent"

"beings who fellowed with myself"

"one who shrined all that was best of womankind"

"foreign constellations west each night"


For those who neither recognize nor guess the poet, it is Thomas Hardy.

[Andrew Frisardi]

Bill, I doubt that anyone is going to disagree that even the greatest poets work with the language and culture they inherit, like everyone else. I wouldn’t use the word “conservative” for what they do with it, though. Your use of that word here levels it out to mean nothing in particular, since by those lights everyone is conservative, like everyone has a body and breathes the air and walks the earth that happens to be available. Your approach is one-size-fits-all. I agree with Richard that most of your last post is a series of truisms cited to support a “school of resentment” (in Bloom’s phrase) approach to great literature. Leveling things off can be so comforting. Ovid inventive? Nope, just a cipher. Dante or Shakespeare uncannily creative? Nah, they just “made good selections from the materials available to them.”

[Janice D. Soderling]

Jan, thanks for these excellent examples. I admire them all and certainly Hardy knows what he is doing.

My objection was never sweeping. I have used "soapboxed" and other such constructions myself.

These examples strengthen me in my belief that the reason I don't like it is that it "spotlights" the giver's having given. I doubt that was the intention of the writer in the article where I found it.

And it may be more complicated than I can figure out.

Thanks for these examples, Jan, and all best for 2011.