“Gift” is an old word; older than English. It comes from Old English, and even before that seems to have been part of ancient Germanic languages. After all, even thousands of years ago people got married. And in those days a “gift” was the payment a man made when purchasing a wife. It’s not certain whether it had any other meanings in Old English, but since the custom of buying wives died out along with that language, that meaning faded away as well. Although in Old German, for some reason, “gift” also meant “poison.”
Out of those less than attractive roots, the modern meaning of “gift” somehow came into use around the 1300s. There are loads of slight variations in the way “gift” is used, from a person being “gifted” with particular abilities or characteristics, to a wrapped present, to the act of giving, to the legal “transference of property for no material consideration.”
“Giftie” was sometimes used as an alternative to “gift” in Scottish, and in the 1800s “giftishness” meant “gifted” in the sense of a talented person. But the word “gift” has stayed pretty consistent in its usage and meaning ever since it entered Middle English with its modern meaning. “Giftie” has also been used slightly differently to mean the (possibly supernatural) source of a gift. This is most famously in the lines of a poem by Robert Burns:
“O, wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!”
Besides the longevity of “gift”, you might notice that you really don’t have many good alternatives to the word. There’s a bit more room for replacements when you’re using “gift” as a verb; instead of “gifting” or “giving” you can “present,” “award,” “contribute,” endow,” “grant,” and “bestow,” but the thing you hand over? Well, you’re pretty much limited to calling it a gift or a present. There are, of course, awards, contributions, endowments, grants, and the like, but none of those is a general-purpose synonym for “gift.”
“Present” has been around nearly as long as “gift,” but where Germanic sources gifted English with “gift,” Latin made a present of “presentum,” which became the English “present.” For some reason, while “gift” really has just one basic meaning, “present” also means “to be in a particular place,” as well as the military meaning of aiming a weapon or placing it in the position to be aimed. But the military sense of “present” is quite a newcomer, having only arrived in the late 1700s, when the much older senses of “present” were already present.
If you want to present someone with a present in a formal, “present arms” sort of manner, you can make the donation, offer the endowment, realize the donation, transfer the benefit, make the tribute, set up the giveaway, or make an offertory oblation of the contributory bequest. Or you could just give them a gift.
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