David Hoffman said:

lux rationis said:

In general, I hate it when people take nouns and verb them. "Gift" is a case in point: "Our suggested minimum pledge level is thirty-five dollars, but several callers have gifted [sic] in excess of one-hundred dollars…"
The verb is "to give." "Gift" is the nominal form. There isn't any reason to use one in place of the other. I have a feeling that those who use "gift" as a verb think that implies an act of greater generosity than does the verb "to give", but who really know what they think?

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I'm completely with you on this one – the phrase "he gifted it to her" drives me crazy. What's wrong with "gave"?

I also get a bit bent out of shape about "persons", as in "certain persons have been known to…". "People" just sounds so much nicer.

At the risk of painting a great big bullseye on my forehead, I will go on record as saying that I see "to gift" as filling a semantic gap. Consider these two sentences:
Leslie didn't have a pen to sign in, so I gave one to her. (could be a loan, a gift, or someone else's pen to use)
Leslie didn't have a pen to sign in, so I gifted one to her. (can only be a gift)

Of couse, I could disambiguate this in a number of ways:
Leslie didn't have a pen to sign in, so I gave one to her as a gift.

And, in lux's example, I also would prefer "given" since the context makes it abundantly clear. I suppose if I were to use "to gift" I would fantasize air quotes around it. I guess that puts me at least 3 inches beyond the tipping point on that slippery slope.