'Emailed' as a verb (vs 'sent email')

Question

I've started to see 'emailed' a lot in our company correspondence but as a non-native speaker I always tend to use 'sent email' instead. Here are some examples from reliable sources:

“I worked with a lady in England named Elizabeth; she’s the best namer of horses I’ve ever met,” Mr. Roberts said. “So I emailed her and asked what I would name him. She emailed right back. She didn’t say ‘I suggest,’ or ‘I think.’” She said, “His name is Benediction.”
-- New York Times

“We condemn the use of the death penalty in all its forms. The death penalty is an inhuman, cruel and irreversible punishment that has no place in modern law,” Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom said in an emailed comment to Reuters news agency. -- Independent

Can we use 'email' as a verb as it is? How normal is this?
According to my own research, 'emailed' has been used a lot but 'email' as a verb is not common. So is this an exception just for the past tense?
Emailed - Lengusa
Email them - Lengusa (replace them with him/her etc)

fev · Answer

Yes, email is very much used as a verb, especially by native speakers, I have noticed that as well. Gngram is very clear about it:

Note that it can be used both transitively (send something by email)

[ + two objects ] Has he emailed you that list of addresses yet?
[Cambridge English Dictionary]

and intransitively:

: to communicate by email
As I write this, a colleague who takes an amateur interest in tracking the weather emailed to say it would be "among the hottest days of 2019 so far, if not #1".
[Merriam-Webster]

TaliesinMerlin · Answer

Yes, email can be a verb. Just as you can send mail or mail something in English, you can send an email or email something.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, email as a verb goes back at least to the 1980s:

1983   Computokid in net.micro (Usenet newsgroup) 25 Aug.   Young stuff interested in correspondence (via dull old paper mail) might email a letter to me to forward.

By the 1990s, email was understandable enough to use in an advertisement to UNIX users:

1993   UNIX Rev. Mar. 28/3 (advt.)    Call, fax or email for a free demo.

It's hard to overstate how commonly understood the usage is. As a small illustration, here are four members of the United States Congress (1,2,3,4) using email me in the title of a site about contacting them via email.

'Emailed' as a verb (vs 'sent email')

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