Word Up! Roget's Returns

TIME magazine may have declared feminism dead, but Roget's Thesaurus is determined to reincarnate it -- in the unlikely vessel of the Spice Girls. The Brit pop sensations' "Girl Power" mantra is listed by the authoritative thesaurus's latest edition as synonymous with "feminism." (Feminists may, however, blanch at the lexicon's association of "womanly" with such adjectives as "weak," "feeble," "unstrung," "adynamic" and "nervous.")

Roget's new edition, which hits the shelves Thursday, recognizes such '90s linguistic phenomena as "bad-hair days" and "road rage," and also gives women (the Spice Girls, perhaps?) license to term a boyfriend "a bit of rough." Meanwhile, doubters hoping to use the authoritative Merriam-Webster dictionary site to check the validity of any of Roget's associations may have to wait a while: The Webster's site is impaired pending the installation of new hardware -- last week, the company's servers were stolen. Or, as Roget's might have it, "purloined," "pilfered," "filched," "bagged," "appropriated" or "cabbaged."