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 Dole, Elmo, Miss Manners and Ozzie Smith? It's "illeist," a person who refers to himself in the third person. The Word Guy found this gem in Anu Garg's "The Dord, the Diglot, and a Therblig or Two: The Hidden Lives and Strange Origins of Words" (Penguin, $13).

In "Words, Words, Words" (Oxford, $16.95), David Crystal draws on a lifetime of exploring the delightful quirks of English. Today we scorn the insertion of an apostrophe into a plural word ("potato's"), he notes, but during the 1700s that spelling was considered correct.

When I read that "nest egg" originally referred to a clay egg placed in a hen's nest to inspire the laying of more eggs, I said, "I didn't know that" . . . and that's the title of the fascinating book where I read it: "I Didn't Know That — The Unusual Origins of the Things We Say" by Karlen Evins (Scribner's $11).

The bookshelves sold at Ikea are named for Swedish occupations, e.g.

"bonde" (farmer), "expedit" (salesman), and the Chinese characters for "Coca Cola" mean "bite of the wax tadpole." I savored these tasty morsels in "Biting the Wax Tadpole" (Melville House, $21.95), Elizabeth Little's feisty romp through the world's languages.

Paula LaRocque's spreeful "On Words: Insight Into How Our Words Work — and Don't" (Marion Street Press, $16.95) revels in, among other hilarities, product labels that treat us like dummies: (on a Superman costume) "The wearing of this garment does not allow you to fly"; (on a sleep aid) "Warning: May cause drowsiness."

If your friends think that Bob Dylan sang, "The ants are my friends," or that the Beatles crooned "the girl with colitis goes by," give them "Ants Are My Friends: A Punderful Celebration of Song" by Richard Lederer and Stan Kegel (Marion Street Press, $12.95), a collection of misunderstood, fractured and garbled song lyrics.

Need a stocking stuffer for that teenager? Grab Define-a-Thon for the High School Freshman or Define-a-Thon for the High School Graduate (both from Houghton Mifflin at $5.95). Both books build vocabulary with snappy quizzes and quotations.

Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Conn., invites your language sightings. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via e-mail to Wordguy@aol.com or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 5777 W. Century Blvd., Suite 700, Los Angeles, CA 90045. To find out more about Rob Kyff and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.