For some reason, fenestra was one of the first words they taught us in Latin class so I knew what it meant the first time I saw it. Heh, I knew I wasn’t totally wasting my time.
As long as I get to make the antepenultimate post, I’ll feel content.
Ah, see, I had the advantage of Catalan there… finestra = window. De- = minus, off. So Defenestrar: off the window.
In Spanish it can also be used to mean “to drop someone (can be oneself) off a high point that’s part of a building.” A neighbor defenestrated himself from his 7th floor balcony after his wife’s funeral, you could see the dark spots on the concrete below for years. When people saw them and asked “what’s that,” we said “oh, some sorf of defect in the concrete.”
And if this post closes the thread, then your ambition will have been achieved.
This thread has seen me, rather perversely, going about my daily chores and chanting many new odd words that were not part of my regular vocabulary until this very day. While drawing my tub: “SA-PON-IF-ICK-AYYY-SHUN!” While washing potatoes: “DEEEEEE-FEN-ES-TRAY-SHUN!” Bud-a-budum-bum-bum-bum! Dadadada!
Totally subconsciously. I don’t realise I’m doing it until I try to figure out what the hell tune I’m trying to sing, because I’ve lost my place. That, or my husband asks me what the hell kind of song is that.
You people will be the education of me, yet.
Totally a band name.
I first came across that in a sociology class in college (Marriage and family life in China) with the term uxorolocal: a marriage in which the couple lives in the wife’s household (as opposed to the wife moving in with the husband’s family, as most couples did).
A fenestration is the opening in the window, it’s the air, not the wood and glass. It’s used in medicine as in a fenestrated surgical drape, or the fenestra ovalis, an opening between the middle ear and the cochlea.
Defenestration seems to have a narrower meaning.
Darn. VetBridge, how did I miss your post? What he said.
There’s also uxoricide, the killing of one’s wife. As a clerihew I wrote begins:
Bay Village resident Dr. Sam Sheppard
By accusations uxoricidal was peppered.
Other victim-specific terms for murder include mariticide (the killing of one’s husband), sororicide (the killing of one’s sister), fratricide (the killing of one’s brother), parricide (the killing of one’s parent), and filicide (the killing of one’s child). This list includes all those, as well as terms for such acts as killing partridges or tapeworms.