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I like to know what you guys think about using feedback as a verb. I've seen it a whole lot in writing and email communications. What would be other alternatives? Your input is appreciated.

Thank you,

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    Can you come up with one sentence/example that you saw for 'feedback' as a verb? In any context, I'm sure it'll not look natural, especially to me.
    – Maulik V
    May 30, 2015 at 4:57
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    Since you've seen it "a whole lot", please give some examples, rather than making us guess. Maybe you've seen it used in a particular way that sounds less bad than what we're imagining?
    – Dan Getz
    May 30, 2015 at 17:57
  • @MaulikV "The signal will feedback into the mic". That's an INCREDIBLY common sentence in my line of work. Is that not a verb? (Ah, just realized I'm rezzing a 2015 comment, Oh well)
    – user65014
    Feb 5, 2018 at 22:01

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There are plenty of situations in which new verbs can be created in English. If a noun such as "feedback" is used as a verb enough times and it sounds ok to enough people then it will be accepted as a verb. The verb "to google" comes to mind. If it doesn't sound ok to anybody then it will be considered wrong. The noun "feedback" is relatively new in the English language and, for the time being, is usually used with the verb "give". Personally I would never say "please feedback me" I would say "please give me feedback"

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    Similar thing for Xerox, started as a brand name for a relative new process and it became a verb, an adjective, and even a noun. Don't know how often it is still used as a verb. I might use it in front of a Canon Copy guy just for kicks. ;)
    – user6951
    May 30, 2015 at 18:58
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Feed back (or feed-back) is already a verb in English.

If someone wants to spell it as feedback and extend its usage to mean to provide feedback, that is fine, but it would only be an extension of an already existing verb.

Both feedback (also spelled feed-back) as a noun and as a (phrasal) verb exist from the early 1920s, first in the field of radio-telegraph technology. So "feed back" is already a verb in English. Whether feed back, feed-back, and/or feedback gains wider usage is unknown to me.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) provides the following.

to feed back (Electronics and Cybernetics)
(a) to return (a fraction of an output signal) to an input of the same or a preceding stage of the circuit, device, process, etc., that produced it. Also transferable. Chiefly in passive. (Cf. feedback noun)

1921 Wireless World 10 Dec. 571/2 The magnified oscillations are fed back again into the grid circuit.

There are other example sentences and they are all spelled fed-back or fed back, whether used in the passive or not. To me this looks like a phrasal verb.

(b) In transferred sense also used intransitively. of a result or effect of a process: to return as feedback; to affect or modify the process that brought it about.

Here is only one example from the OED:

1966 Rep. Comm. Inq. Univ. Oxf. I. 56 There are also advances in social studies, at postgraduate level, that are likely to feed back into undergraduate work.

The verb already exists. To feedback in the sense of provide feedback to someone would just be an extension of its usage.

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Feedback is a verb phrase. If you want to change the verb's tense, number, et cetera, you should modify "feed" separately from "back". For example:

  • Feedback loops occur when the output from a system is fed back into the system.
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    Yes, but this is probably not the feedback that the OP had in mind.
    – DJMcMayhem
    May 30, 2015 at 15:42

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