| 释义 |
defenestration|diːfɛnɪˈstreɪʃən|
[mod. f. L. de- I. 1, 2 + fenestra a window: so in mod.F.]
The action of throwing out of a window.
Defenestration of Prague, the action of the Bohemian insurgents who, on the 21st of May 1618, broke up a meeting of Imperial commissioners and deputies of the States, held in the castle of the Hradshin, and threw two of the commissioners and their secretary out of the window; this formed the prelude to the Thirty Years' War.
1620Reliq. Wotton. (1672) 507 A man saued at the time of the defenestration. 1837Southey Lett. (1856) IV. 521, I much admire the manner in which the defenestration is shown [in a picture]. 1863Neale Ess. Liturgiol. 238 Which commencing at the defenestration of Prague..terminated in the peace of Westphalia.
Hence (as a back-formation) deˈfenestrate v. trans. (usu. joc.), to throw out of a window; deˈfenestrated ppl. a. (in quot. 1927 punningly = ‘windowless’?).
1620H. Wotton Lett. (1907) II. 199 Two of the defenestrated men. 1915Lit. Digest 20 Mar. 668/3 The word defenestrate means ‘to throw out of the window’..but there is no good authority for its use. 1927C. Connolly Let. 27 Apr. in Romantic Friendship (1975) 298 Prague..seemed a good place, gloomy and defenestrated. 1958J. C. Herold Mistress to Age (1959) xii. 246 ‘I am like the Irishman who kept coming back until he was thrown out of a fourth-floor window.’ So confident was she of not being defenestrated that she rented a house at 540 rue de Lille. 1974Publishers Weekly 30 Sept. 52/2 Anne Ramsdell, a brilliant math professor at Oxford,..escapes death by stabbing but is thrown out of her third-story window... Anne meets and falls in love with the man who had defenestrated her at Oxford. |
