there and back again

Favorite Words

On May 23, 1618, the balmy air below Prague Castle thickened with the smell of a large pile of horse manure festering in the dry moat.  About mid-afternoon, three figures could be seen flying out of an upper window.  Following their thirty-meter descent into the opportune manure pile, the two Imperial Regents and their secretary climbed out unharmed, though entirely unrecognizable. This is the true account of the Second Defenestration of Prague.

I first discovered the word ‘defenestrate’ in Latin II.  Those were the days. Instead of copying our noun charts, my classmates and I amused ourselves by finding funny ways to use our new obscure vocabulary in sentences.  From the root word ‘fenestra’, meaning window, defenestrating refers to throwing someone or something out of a window.  Defenestrate easily replaces clichés like ‘take out with the trash’ or ‘throw under the bus.’  However, defenestrate can be a surprisingly versatile word.  In the city of Prague, in particular, defenestration has twice described a major political uprising or upheaval.  The 1618 event, described above, was preceded by the more dramatic defenestration of 1419 in which seven city council members were thrown to their deaths.

A more modern usage involves computers. When a computer freezes, the user is thus defenestrated, or thrown out of the Windows Operating System.  Someone fed up with Microsoft Windows may decide to defenestrate his computer and install a different operating system.  I remember fondly the day I defenestrated my system by switching to a Mac.

So think twice about defenestrating the study of the Latin language:  we need these magnificent words!