Somewhere between “please give me grace” and “please give me a break,” there exists a tiny linguistic battlefield where adults with too much time on their hands argue about whether you can gift someone something.

And I would just like to say, as a licensed user of words in the wild. I am not entering that battlefield. I am decorating it.

Because yes, I  gift things. I gift time. I gift patience. I gift the last 15 minutes of a meeting when we all collectively realize we could have been emails. I gift it generously, like a benevolent time wizard with a calendar and a mild sense of rebellion.

And yet, every so often, someone appears from the grammatical fog like, “Actually, ‘gift’ is not a verb.”

To which I say bah humbug. Light a candle. Sit down.

Because “gift” as a verb is not new. It’s not a Gen Z invention. It’s not even a corporate buzzword crime scene. It’s been quietly doing its job for centuries, probably rolling its eyes at us the whole time like, “I’ve been here since before your passive-aggressive meeting invites.”

Do we say “I give you a present”? Sure. Technically correct. Also emotionally beige.

But “I gift you something”? That has flavor. That has intention. That has a faint sparkle of I could have kept this energy to myself, but I did not.

And honestly, in a world where everything is a deliverable, a KPI, a touchpoint, and a follow-up-to-the-follow-up, I am choosing the verbs that feel like they have a heartbeat.

So yes, I gift grace. I gift silence when it’s needed. I even gift 15 minutes at the end of a meeting when we all pretend we weren’t already mentally in the parking lot.

If language is a living thing, I prefer mine alive, slightly opinionated, and occasionally generous.

So no, I will not be correcting myself.

I will be gifting this verb forward.