cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/44833191
Oddly specific.
Defenestration: How high ranking Russian officials are retired when they are no longer useful.
this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2026
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Defenestration, the word with 6 meanings and 4 of them are the same.
Btw can you buy laptops unfenestrated? I don't mean macbooks.
It comes from wikitionary.
7. The act of throwing out of a window (something or someone)
Year of the Linux desktop!
every year is the year of linux if defenestrate windows
Huh, TIL that's a thing. I noticed it has the word "fenster" in it, so I guess it makes sense the Germans made this one, they love oddly specific words lol
Ackshually it's from Neo-Latin ‘fenestra’ meaning ‘window’, specifically coined in 1620, presumably as ‘defenestratio’:
A word invented for one incident: the "Defenestration of Prague" (May 21, 1618), in which two Catholic deputies to the Bohemian national assembly and a secretary were tossed out the window of the castle of Hradschin by Protestant radicals. The trio landed in a trash heap and survived, but it marked the start of the Thirty Years' War.
‘Fenster’ was borrowed from Latin as ‘*fenestr’ way back in the times of Proto-West Germanic. Which, to my understanding, is a somewhat unusual behavior for Germanic languages.
P.S. As noted below, in German it's 'Fenstersturz', meaning simply 'windowfall'.
Interesting, the OED adds this:
Compare post-classical Latin defenestratio (1620 or earlier, although the author claims to be coining the word). Compare also Middle French, French défenestrer to throw out of a window (1564), and German Fenstersturz (1626 or earlier in this sense; lit. ‘act of throwing from a window’; also more fully Prager Fenstersturz), the usual German name for the 1618 event.
“Defenestration, N., Etymology.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, March 2025, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/9213494086.
Wiktionary actually lists both words as sorta-cognates (under ‘etymology’). However, Wiktionary has a habit of not listing any dates. But, Trésor de la langue française informatisé says that the 1564 source uses the word in the meaning of removing windows of a house — while also noting that the French-root ‘défenêtrer’ should be used for this meaning instead of the Latin ‘défenestrer’.
In the typical blunt German manner, ‘Fenstersturz’ is simply composed of ‘window’+‘fall’.
I thought it also meant throwing it out the window from a specific floor.
I did that last week. Now I'm on omarchy. It's quite handy. I even switched to neovim for my daily writing and coding. Loving the keyboard-focussed control.
Isn't omarchy created by a fascist, racist, transphobic pos?
I've heard that, but I'm not actively seeking out the cult of personality. He's made a good product though. He's also very active in the project and very active in the spotlight. His hunger for fame does not bode well for the allegations against him. It's usually those people who are the worst.
But still, it's a good product. He might be an asshole,but I don'think he will become an Elon musk kind of asshole. But if he does, it'll be easy enough to abandon omarchy en masse.
Well well well, if it isn’t the Year of the Linux Desktop wink wink.
a better one *