There is absolutely no need to accept a verb "to gift" in order to approve of the adjective "gifted".

The OED1 does just that for both gifted and bearded, but that is because the verbs to gift and to beard have existed these four or five centuries.

Under the enter for -ed 2, the suffix that is applied to nouns substantive, such as blue-eyed and diseased, there is a great quotation from Coleridge apropos the suffix: "I regret to see that vile and barbarous vocable talented ... The formation of a participle passive from a noun is a license that nothing but a very peculiar felicity can approve." [from Table Talk 1836]

But I love your invocation of Don Quixote's tilting against windmills as an apt image of grammar mavens railing against the very nature of language.

Ceci n'est pas un seing.