The reason it sounds odd is that we don't have many verbs ending in -xt. But we do have verbs ending in -x (like "fix") which in their past tense sound like -xt. In fact the past of "fix" was spelled "fixt" for a while. Therefore, when you say "texted", your brain thinks you're being redundant with the ending. Something similar happened with the word "skate" which was originally "skates" in the singular, but people thought "skateses" sounded wrong in the plural so eventually they dropped the final -s in the singular.
As frequent visitors to Wordlady, you will know that you can't object to the verb "text" on the grounds that the word is really a noun, not a verb (see my "Verbs: it's ok to do this. Really!" post). But you may think nonetheless that this is a darned newfangled word. Get ready for a surprise: the first evidence we have for "text" as a verb is from... 1599!
Back then it meant either "write in large or capital letters" (an example in Much Ado About Nothing is: "Yea and text vnder-neath, here dwells Benedick the married man") or "cite a text to" (a bizarrely current-sounding example from 1615 is "When his wench told him that he kissed like a Clowter, he could text her"). Although these meanings died out after about a century, a Victorian job-seeker could still make his job pitch in 1884 as follows:
"Wanted, a re-engagement as Engrossing and General Clerk‥excellent writer and texter".Not something one is likely to see on a CV these days, no matter how true it may be. However, with more employers looking for social-media savvy types, who knows?
Even the current meaning of "text" has been around longer than you probably think: the Oxford English Dictionary's current first evidence for it is from 1998.
The word "text" has a fascinating etymology. Look for it in an upcoming Wordlady "Word of the Week."
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