What's the Good Word?

Imagine you're innocently walking by a large building, and you see an angry crowd rushing inward. You hear shouts from indside, and you linger. With no warning, a window on a floor above bursts open, and some unfortunate individual is hurled outward quite involuntarily and then falls to their doom. "WOW!" you think to yourself. "I wish there were a word to describe this fantastic yet horrific event I have just witnessed." My friend, there is such a word: defenestration. The English language has many oddities, and even more treasures. "Defenestration" is one of those treasures. Unsurprisingly, it's root is Latin, and, even less surprisingly, that root is fenestra, translated "window". Naturally.

Upon further consideration, it seems that the English language has a special word for almost any untimely manner of demise. Strangulation, decapitation, drowning, dismemberment, disembowelment... let's move on before anybody loses their appetite.

I think I'll stick with free falling objects for the next post.