Gift: not really all that new

Plenty of people complain about things they don't like in English, and generally add to their complaint, if it's not the basis in the first place, that it's some new aberrant usage, some recent barbarism or corruption. As the verb "gift", for instance, which a number of commenters* at You Don't Say were complaining about recently.

Another commenter provided the perfect example of this Recency Illusion: an excerpt from the entry on "gift (v.)" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Note the dates of the cited usages:

1. trans. To endow or furnish with gifts (see chiefly GIFT n. 6); to endow, invest, or present with as a gift.

1608 W. SCLATER Malachy (1650) 197 See how the Lord gifted him above his brethren. 1621 SANDERSON 12 Serm. (1637) 396 If God have not gifted us for it, he hath not called us to it. 1749 FIELDING Tom Jones I. v, Nothing but the inspiration with which we writers are gifted can possibly enable anyone to make the discovery. 1834 T. MEDWIN Angler in Wales I. 290 How admirably Nature had provided..by gifting it [the salmon] with a form of all others the best adapted for [etc.]. 1844 MRS. BROWNING Rom. Swan's Nest, The world must love and fear him Whom I gift with heart and hand. 1884 ROGERS 6 Cent. Work & Wages I. 126 Many settlements, which afterwards grew into towns, were gifted subsequently with parliamentary representation.

2. To bestow as a gift; to make a present of. Const. with to or dative. Also with away. Chiefly Sc.
1619 J. SEMPILL Sacrilege 31 If they object, that tithes, being gifted to Levi, in official inheritance, can stand no longer than Levi [etc.]. a1639 SPOTTISWOOD Hist. Ch. Scot. v. (1677) 278 The recovery of a parcel of ground which the Queen had gifted to Mary Levinston. 1711 in A. McKay Hist. Kilmarnock (1880) 98 This bell was gifted by the Earl of Kilmarnock to the town of Kilmarnock for their Council~house. 1801 RANKEN Hist. France I. 301 Parents were prohibited from selling, gifting, or pledging their children. 1829 J. BROWN New Deeside Guide (1876) 19 College of Blairs..having been gifted to the Church of Rome by its proprietor. 1878 J. C. LEES Abbey of Paisley xix. 201 The Regent Murray gifted all the Church Property to Lord Sempill.

* One of them wrote this:

And whilst I will acknowledge my ear is not the final arbiter in such things (all though Ear thinks it should have that position) gifted is just wrong.

I won't actually point and laugh...