Book gifts for word lovers

hairsplitters (“fortuitous/fortunate”), he'll help you pick the winner.

Speaking of winning, how do you win someone over to your point of view? Act like a feline, says Jay Heinrichs in his clever and instructive “How To Argue With a Cat – A Human's Guide to the Art of Persuasion” (Rodale Press, $14.99). You can purr (flatter your target), prowl (gather information), paw (use hand gestures) and pounce (surprise your quarry). And remember that a quiet meow is often more effective than a howl.

A cat, of course, can also “have nine lives,” “get your tongue,” and even be “killed by curiosity.” Mark Abley explores the origins, uses and abuses of idioms like these in his delightful “Watch Your Tongue:

What Our Everyday Sayings and Idioms Literally Figuratively Mean” (Simon and Schuster Canada, $19.99). You'll learn, for instance, that the saying “Silence is golden” is a shortened version of “Speech is silver, but silence is golden,” and that “speak with a forked tongue” originated not among Native Americans but in British literature of the 1600s.

And for terms that DID begin in America, turn to Rosemarie Ostler's exhilarating “Splendiferous Speech: How Early Americans Pioneered Their Own Brand of English” (Chicago Review Press, $17.99). You'll learn that “caucus” derives from the Algonquian “caw-cawwassoughes” (a governing council of elders), that American explorers invented a new meaning for “hole” (a low-lying, grassy area, as in “Jackson Hole”), and that the verbs “belittle,” “stump,” “demoralize” and “avoid like the plague” were coined by Thomas Jefferson, Davy Crockett, Noah Webster and William Penn, respectively. As the coonskin cap on the book's cover suggests, Ostler especially savors the colorful language of the frontier, e.g., “backtrack,” “a-hunting,” “elbow grease,” “bamboozle,” “passel,” “play possum.”

May your holiday season be splendiferous!