Aenigmae
Who said the Vatican is old school? Just stumbled on a word list issued by the Holy See that brings Latin into the new millennium, with such words as tape recorder (or machina echoica) and astronaut (aerius viator) converted into Pope-speak.
Some are hilarious. Drugs aren’t drugs but medicamentae stupefactivae, while a bidet cops the elegant ovata pelvis. Even the wicked gateau is so much easier to resist as a placenta farta.
Turning to new-wave trades, any clue who a siphonius might be? My stab was barman, but the answer is a fireman. (Hang on a minute. Didn’t Ancient Rome have a fire brigade? This could explain pyro Nero”¦.)
Barman, meanwhile, is a taberna potoriae minister. No wonder the Empire fell to the Visigoths. A senator could die of thirst before his bloody vino lobbed.
Entering the holy spirit of this Lexicon Recentis Latinatis, see if you can figure out what modern concept has been translated into the old tongue below. The English answers (to come soon) are in alphabetical order:
Segregatio nigritarum
Totius corporis inspectio
Amor levis
Brevissimae bracae femineae
Capacissima aerinavis
Umbrella descensoria
Maizae grana tosta
Mandatum nummarium periegeticum