Wordie: Defenestration: Comments

Comment by gangerh, 11 months ago

Sat, 29 Nov 2008 14:09:20 +0000

My name is Jack Parlabane and I'm pan-breid. Aye, that's right, don't kid on you can't understand the rhyming slang. And let me finish before you laugh - you'll get more out of it once you hear the details. Killed in a typically foolhardy endeavour (let's avoid the word 'undertaking', shall we?), death by defenestration, gravity finally delivering the ultimate skelp in the arse in revenge for my years of insolent defiance. A four-storey fall out of my own living room window. Ironic? Inevitable? Hilarious? Take your pick. Surprising? Not my call. I guess you could call it the ultimate humiliation. Certainly looked pretty fucking ultimate from my perspective. Actually, truth be told the fall itself isn't so bad, no matter the height. It's that last inch that's a cunt.

From 'Attack Of The Unsinkable Rubber Ducks' by Christopher Brookmyre.

Comment by Tolland, about 1 year ago

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 01:15:48 +0000

The freshly flamed bags of poop became objects of defenestration, causing distress and frustration amongst the crowd; abused most were the brown splattered po-po's, causing them to ponder this very simple question: If monkeys could do it, does that mean we should, too?

Comment by sionnach, about 1 year ago

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:58:53 +0000

defenestration: Uninstalling Windows and installing Linux instead.

(John Pascoe)

Comment by MissAnthropist, about 1 year ago

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:34:00 +0000

Learnt of this from an ex about 12 years ago... Something tragic happened, and the deceased's doctor simply told him to get along with his life when queried on why the life could not be saved.
Evidently, one can be tried & charged with defenestration in court.

Comment by johnmperry, about 1 year ago

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 22:53:12 +0000

In my mind defenestration is inexorably linked with Prague like boiled bacon and pease pudding

Comment by johnmperry, about 1 year ago

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 12:11:54 +0000

I used to have a newspaper cutting, but I've lost it now. It told of two guys in hospital with broken necks or somesuch. They had both fallen out of the upper window of a bar. Witnesses said they were trying to see who could lean out the farthest. They were said to be laughing as they fell...

Comment by factoryjoe, about 1 year ago

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 07:12:41 +0000

See this: http://www.metaphorm.org/pages/portfolio/defenestration/defen.html

Comment by frindley, about 1 year ago

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 15:21:32 +0000

It's now on facebook as one of the "poking" options. You can hug someone, hi-five them, etc. Or you can defenestrate them.

Comment by teflon, about 1 year ago

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 16:02:10 +0000

While visiting my family recently, my dad told me that a domestic dispute in a second floor flat near our house resulted in someone being thrown out of a window, suffering serious injuries (though they did survive).

I felt a bit bad about taking glee in actually being able to use this word in its correct context. (Hang on, that's schadenfreude, isn't it?)

Comment by kafie, about 1 year ago

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 02:35:13 +0000

maybe deportification would mean throwing people out portholes. Which I suspect would be more rare than defenestration.

Comment by reesetee, about 1 year ago

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 15:30:53 +0000

Clearly, we Wordies are a ghoulish people.

Comment by seanahan, about 1 year ago

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 04:23:33 +0000

The list of the most popular words is Wordie Top 100 words .

Comment by skipvia, about 1 year ago

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 18:56:59 +0000

I suspect, bilby, that it's because the act it describes is so singularly rare. We don't have a word like "deportification" to describe the more common occurrence of throwing people out of doors, for example. (Although, see deponticate...]

Comment by bilby, about 1 year ago

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 18:34:29 +0000

Is this the most popular word on Wordie? Must be close. Would anyone care to speculate why?

Literary

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 18:10:26 +0000

Patrick Leigh Fermor writes eloquently about the multiple defenestrations and depontifications (throwing people of bridges) of Prague in Between the Woods and the Water. That book also has more impressive architectural terms than the whole of The Name of the Rose. And I think he learned Magyar for good measure...

Comment by Evin290, over 2 years ago

Sat, 19 May 2007 23:41:02 +0000

Prague never knew what hit it.

Comment by sionnach, over 2 years ago

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 06:06:35 +0000

At 6.30 on the morning of Wednesday, March 10th, 1948, the body of foreign minister Jan Masaryk was found lying in the cobbled courtyard below the window of his official flat in the palace. Whether he jumped to his death or was pushed in one of Prague's notorious defenestrations has never been conclusively established. He was sixty-one years old.

Comment by caffeinatedcows, over 2 years ago

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 20:00:41 +0000

I would like to point out that there have been two historical defenestrations of Prague. It is quite possible that certain groups of people are more prone to throwing other groups of people out of windows.

Comment by Valse, over 2 years ago

Thu, 04 Jan 2007 16:40:00 +0000

See the Wikipedia article on this practice--shows how both horrendous and comical defenestration can be. "Catholics ascribed the survival of those defenestrated at Prague Castle in 1618 to divine intervention, while Protestants claimed that it was due to their landing in a large pile of manure."

Comment by kalidas, over 2 years ago

Tue, 02 Jan 2007 11:35:53 +0000

defenestrated through time

Comment by John, over 2 years ago

Wed, 13 Dec 2006 11:05:36 +0000

Maybe a decade ago, when the town I live in was a rougher place, a guy here was killed in a bar fight because he was refenestrated. After being thrown out a window, the guys he was fighting followed him out, and threw him back in. It was the return trip, apparently, that killed him.

Historical

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 08:05:14 +0000

I love that the first recorded use of this word (1620) is the act of defenestration that was a precursor to the 30-years war. It's nearly four hundred years old, and yet it sounds like somebody made it up last year.

Comment by kenspeckle, over 2 years ago

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 21:07:17 +0000

Somehow threatening to "self-defenestrate" is a lot funnier than saying you're going to toss yourself out the window.

Comment by Noldo, over 2 years ago

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 10:23:41 +0000

Death by defenestration. A beautiful way to go.

Comment by seanahan, over 2 years ago

Sat, 02 Dec 2006 18:04:45 +0000

For some reason people really like this word. I first heard it many years ago and sometimes people use it just for the sake of using it.

Untimely

Sat, 02 Dec 2006 16:42:15 +0000

The window smashes. You feel the wind whistle past you. It all ends. Somewhere, in your last flicker of conscious thought, you realise that there is a word for your death, and you are at peace.