The knowledge of word’s historical dimension and the study of veterum conseutudo loquendi made Lorenzo Valla (1406-1457) one of the best philologists of Italian 15th century. In Elegantie lingue latine, the humanist condenses all his linguistic knowledge showing, in the hundreds of entries that make up the six books, the framework of his method, founded on the concepts of elegantia, property and historicity of language.
The lack of tools for a detailed analysis of Humanistic Latin can be healed by an examination of Valla’s linguistic production and specifically of the Elegantie, which aims to restore the elocutio commoda et perfecta, studying the development of words’ meaning through Classical, Late-Antiquity and Middle Ages, in order to create a Neo-Latin Vocabulary.