The Reverse Gerund: Should It Be a Capital Offense?

Deidre and I were talking today about gerunds (verbs turned into nouns; e.g., swimming), and that soon got me onto one of my favorite soapboxes: what I call--for want of a better term--the reverse gerund. By this I mean a noun turned into a verb, a particularly heinous example of which is "to gift". There was also a commercial some time back that referred to "a better way to office," while more common examples are "to message," "to text," etc.

I don't know if it's just me, but for reasons I can't quite identify, I think the reverse gerund is a horrifying abuse of the language. Perhaps it's because it has an immediate sound of jargon, of insider talk; or perhaps it's just cutesy. Of course, reverse gerunds have been with us for a long time, probably as long as gerunds themselves--I think nothing, for instance, of saying that I'm "posting" to my blog--but they seem to have undergone an almost virus-like proliferation in recent years.

Okay, so maybe the use of the reverse gerund is not the worst offense out there in this world, but it's still one that makes my flesh crawl. Now that I've ranted, I'm going to go off and television, then bed. When I wake up, I'll breakfast... and so on, I suppose, until I afterlife.