Are your friends and family members booked for the holidays? If not, consider giving them a new book about words.

"Ad Infinitum — A Biography of Latin" by Nicholas Ostler (Walker, $27.95) tells the amazing saga of a language that conquered the world. Early Christians, for instance, lipped their Latin with a vulgar, plebian tone and used military terms like "sacramentum" (the loyalty oath of a Roman solider) to gain wider appeal.

What word describes Bob ...

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