Play Santa "Clause" this holiday season by giving your family and friends some of these new books about words and language.

Keith Houston tells us the fascinating stories of hyphens, hashtags, asterisks and ampersands in "Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols and Other Typographical Marks" (W. W. Norton & Company, $25.95). The term "octothorpe" for the "#" sign, for instance, has been variously attributed to: 1. Georgia's colonial founder, James Oglethorpe 2. its resemblance to an English village or "thorp" (eight fields around a central square) 3. Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe.

British linguist David Crystal explores the lore of letters in "Spell It Out: The Curious, Enthralling, and Extraordinary Story of English Spelling" (St. Martin's Press, $22.99). He explains that many of the silent letters in today's words were once pronounced, e.g., the "b" in "comb," "k" in "knife," and "gh" (as "f") in "daughter." And "hiccough" showed up in English as "hikup," pronounced as we do today, but later came to be spelled like "cough."

Mark Forsyth takes a delightful paddle down the river of derivations in "The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll Through the Hidden Connections of the English Language " (Berkley Trade, $16). In one magical meander, he shows how the Latin word "torpidus" (sluggish, numb) gave us the name of an electric eel ("torpido") because it renders its victims numb. And because a submarine was shaped like an eel, it was called a "torpedo." Finally, "torpedo" came to mean, not the submarine, but the explosive device that it deployed.

Liesl Schillinger torpedoes the annoyances of contemporary life in "Wordbirds: An Irreverent Lexicon for the 21st Century" (Simon & Schuster, $17.99). Illustrated with wonderful drawings of birds by Elizabeth Zechel, this clever glossary invents and defines "robrage" (anger at receiving "robocalls"), "daytrap" (a one-day outing that becomes exhausting and expensive) and "parking spaced" (to have forgotten where you parked your car).

Asher Cantrell offers a verbal version of "Guinness World Records" in "The Book of Word Records: A Look at Some of the Strangest, Shortest, Longest, and Overall Most Remarkable Words in the English Language" (Adams Media, $14.95). He playfully picks out the prettiest words in English (turquoise, capricious, mellifluous), the longest one-syllable words (squirreled, strengths, stretched), the longest words without a vowel (tsktsks, sphynx, syzygy) and the most popular passwords (Iloveyou, sunshine, letmein, and, yes, password).

May your holiday season pass with many good words!

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 [email protected] or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 737 3rd Street, Hermosa Beach, CA 90254