Re: OT: Humor: was Re: Profiles (WAS: Re: Conlang-to-body-shape connections)

At 20:02 16/04/2003 +0200, you wrote:
>En réponse à Pablo David Flores :
>
>>Isn't it used in the figurative sense? Spanish has "defenestrar"
>>as a synonym for "destroying someone's career" or "dismiss
>>and humiliate publicly" and so on (especially referring to
>>politicians).
>
>No, French never uses this word in a figurative sense. It's *only* used in
>the concrete sense. But hey, we French've never had a tradition of throwing
>people from the windows. We rather cut heads ;))) . And indeed, "lui couper
>la tête" ("to behead him/her", as it happens, the expression in this form
>is epicene :) ) can sometimes be used to mean "destroy one's career". But
>it's not common.
The practice of defenestration seems to have been characteristically
Bohemian -- there was the famous incident of the Defensetrations of Prague
in the 16th century, which I think led to the Thirty Years War. It seems to
have been used on politicians who'd made too many enemies.

Autodefenestrator - one who ejects himself from a window. A word I invented
as an epithet for an acquaintance who did this when drunk. He suffered only
minor injuries.

Pete