It seems that every week I am faced with the same problem: a writing prompt that I don't know how to answer. And so I wait, reading each blog post as they are written, hoping that another author will give me ideas. Unfortunately, even with my fellow students' input, I struggled to find a word that stood out to me, one that I particularly enjoyed using. There seemed to be no single word that I found myself writing or saying over and over again, nor one that seemed especially melodic to my ears. And so, as happens each week, I began a search—this time for a favorite word. Throughout the day, listening to conversations, rolling long words around in my head, I hoped for inspiration without success. I began reading; reading everything and analyzing each individual word, evaluating its potential to become the subject of this post.
Defenestrate. I found it while reading notes passed in a high school Spanish class. (Don't ask me why I still have them, they're mostly junk.) I had forgotten the obsession of a certain friend with this word. An obsession which quickly made the word into a long-standing inside joke. No matter the context, defenestration made our conversations more interesting and more humorous. This word was used to add comedy to every subject—from biology to statistics, to strange people on campus—with unfailing success.
From its definition, "to throw a person or thing out a window," the comical value of this word is clear. Not only is defenestrate a long word, perhaps with a vague resemblance to biology vocabulary, it has a very silly meaning. In my note from Spanish class, the sentence "I need to defenestrate that" not only gave me the inspiration for this post, but made me laugh. Perhaps my amusement at the word defenestrate is a product of the inside jokes I associate with it, but it is definitely a word worth including in everyday vocabulary.
I definitely love that word. I am constantly looking for a word to quickly say that I through something out of a window. I learned about this word somewhere in high school but I seemed to have forgotten it. Now when I throw something out a window it will be much easier to quickly describe my activities to others.
ReplyDeleteI come home one night and my roommate asks "what have you been doing lately?" I reply, "why I've only been innocently defenestrating people." My teacher asks, "where is your paper?" I respond, "I accidentally defenestrated it." My enemy asks, "where is my couch?" I shrug and say, "I think I saw someone defenestrate it earlier." My sister asks, "where is my puppy?"
This is an awesome word. It sounds awesome plus the definition is hilarious. I want to use the word defenestrate now when people tick me off and I can find a way to threaten them without their knowledge of it. I am really glad that you defined the word. I never knew that a word like this even was possible. You did an awesome job presenting the information in an entertaining way.
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