Doing Windows

Well, we had to come to this word eventually: defenestration. Which is, the act of throwing someone or something out of a window. No one I know who knows the word dislikes it, despite its often tragic consequences. Why its universal appreciation (for the word itself, not the act, I presume)? It probably starts with the sheer sound of the word, five syllables (custom-built for haiku) that simply sing off of one's tongue and out of one's mouth to perfume the air around one. Not to downplay the, uh, gravity of the word's meaning, but it seems to be one of those words that sounds dirtier than it is (e.g. exacerbate--try teaching that word to a class full of teenage boys). Jay Leno should do a cable show and ask random people on the street to explain what the couple were doing in this sentence: "Dick and Jane were caught in the act of defenestration." Descendants of the Marquis de Sade might be calling the FCC over that one.

Odd then, that for such a poetic sounding word, its derivation is rather humdrum. According to the Wikkians, the word comes from the Latin de- (from) and fenestra (window or opening). (Just once I'd like to hear a would-be maid tell the would-be employer, "I don't do fenestras" [fenestrae?].) Still, though, I think a large part of the word's appeal comes from the very fact that there is a word, a single word, glorious as it is, to sum up the entire action of throwing someone or something out of a window. As far as I know, there is no word to sum up cementing someone's feet and throwing him/her in a scummy river, or finding one's lover in bed with someone else, or being marooned on a deserted island, or lying on a psychiatrist's couch, or gouging one's eyes out watching the Browns on TV--occurrences that Hollywood, or cartoonists, or real life, makes one believe happen all the time. But the act of throwing someone or something out of a window gets its own five-star word. What an amazing language.

Makes you think there must have been a lot of high-powered defenestrations through the ages, so many, in fact, that wordsmiths took off their spectacles, rubbed their temples, and said, "There's gotta be a word for all these throwings out of windows," and then defenestrated their reverse dictionaries when they couldn't find one. Well, we can tip our joyous tongues to the wordsmiths of Prague, because, again according to the Wikkians (click the link, they've got a great list of real and fictional defenestrations), it seems that that great Bohemian city is responsible for the word defenestration. Incidents two hundred years apart in that city of beautiful fenestrae, one in 1419 where seven town officials were defenestrated (makes one wonder if the word lemming originated there as well) and another in 1618 when two Imperial governors and their secretary (still taking dictation, "AAAAHHHHHH!"?) were defenestrated, became known as the Defenestration(s) of Prague (not to be outdone, the Commies got in the act and defenestrated politician Jan Masaryk in Prague in 1948, for his opposition to a putsch [no wonder my grandmother always said, "Be careful of opposing putsches"]). Thank God for romantic, artistic, classical Prague and its violent politicos and inviting windows, because something tells me if there had been a rash (maybe sash?) of throwings out of windows in somewheres such as Timbuktu, Gdansk, or Scranton-Wilkes Barre, we'd be missing a great word.

But something bugs me. Why is the word defenestration only used pejoratively? Many throwings of someones or somethings out of windows can be quite positive. Sure, when someone dies via a window, copy editors go mad showing off their erudition by using the word defenestration, but when someone is saved from a burning building by jumping out of a window, do we ever see this headline: Flames Erupt; Defenestration Saves Man, 52? In a jocular sense, do we ever see the word in a headline such as this: Ho Hum, Rock Band Defenestrates Another Motel TV? If they, well, threw in (or out) a groupie or two, then sure, Charges of Defenestration (And Other Questionable Moral Acts) Brought Against Rock Band. People, for the umpteenth time, I urge you to make frequent use of a great word, in this case, to save the word defenestration from its benign/positive desuetude. How simple could it be to throw a few sentences like this into your daily verbosity? "Excuse me George, I just have to defenestrate some birdseed." Or, "Just a second Marge, the Yankees are having another victory parade. I need to defenestrate some confetti." Or, "Quick, Fabio! I hear my husband. Defenestration!"

And lest some of you think it is impossible for me to be critical of Bob Dylan, ever since I learned the meaning of defenestration, I have never forgiven the usually dictionally-correct Dylan for taking the mundane, easy way out in the first verse of "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You" by singing, "Throw my ticket out the window/Throw my suitcase out there too." Imagine the lexiconal good if that dulcet voice had just sung, "Defenestrate my Amtrak ticket/Defenestrate my suitcase too"?

I don't think Amtrak goes there, but one day I will achieve my dream of making it to Prague. But now I'll be wiser: I'm staying away from the windows there.

Robert Wyatt-Blues In Bob Minor

Dion-Windows