Once the lingua franca of the civilized world, Latin today is little more than the fusty muttering of academics, historians and (some) priests. But in Rome a team of linguists led by top Latin scholar Abbot Carlo Egger is working to rectify that unspeakable state of linguistic affairs.

This spring the Vatican is publishing the A-to-L volume of a lexicon turning into Latin some 15,000 phrases that did not exist in the time of Cicero and Caesar. Among the neologisms from the complete opus: ampla rerum venalium domus (supermarket), ignitabulum nicotianum (cigarette lighter), nuntius fulminans (news flash) and mulierum liberatio (women's lib). Beams Abbot Egger, who is also the editor of a Latin newspaper: "This is proof; Latin can be used even today for everything."

Well, maybe. But how many guys are going to ask their girls to join them in a saltatio carolotoniensis (Charleston) on the extrema hebdomada feriata (weekend)? The answer, needless to say, is manifestum.