Why Does English Have a Word Meaning “To Throw Someone Out of a Window”?

Magdalena Benedetto called us from South Carolina.

She’s 13 years old, and she asked, why do we have a word for throwing somebody out of a window into the street, but not a word for the day after tomorrow?

Why do we have defenestrate, but not a word for the day after tomorrow?

But we do have a word for the day after tomorrow. It’s just not common.

That’s exactly right.

And that word is? Overmorrow.

Right.

So you might say, tomorrow and overmorrow will bring us a heat wave.

And the reason we have a word for throwing people out of a window? That’s a word that was invented to denote what’s called the defenestration of Prague.

And that happened in 1618 when two Catholic officials and a secretary were tossed out of the window of the castle that at that time was the seat of power.

And it was the start of the Thirty Years’ War.

So we do have that word. It’s what we might call a stunt word. You don’t hear it very often, I guess, unless you’re, you know, throwing something out of the window.

Defenestration comes from the Latin word fenestra, which means window. And you see that in the French word fenet. And also fenster in German, which is part of one of my favorite German words, which is Kirchenfenster, which English-speaking wine lovers will know as legs on a wine glass.

But in German, it’s Kirchenfenster, which means church window, because they kind of look like little church windows, those legs going down the glass.

The legs going down the glass? You mean the way the wine drips on the inside of the glass?

Yeah, when you swirl the wine and then you watch it kind of drip down.

Yeah, it adheres a little bit to the inside of the glass, but it also drips down.

Yeah, and it looks sort of like a series of church windows.

I mean, I’ve always thought about it as—

Oh, that’s right, with a little bit of arch but a little bit of color.

Yeah, Kirchenfinster.

Oh, how about that?

That’s a lovely term.

The world is filled with beautiful colors and language.

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