Defenestrate

To throw out of a window.

To throw out of a window.

It is hum­bling that I had to look up a word that I heard on net­work tele­vi­sion. I think it was one of the Law and Order spin-offs. Some­one had been killed by being defen­es­trat­ed. I did a lit­tle dou­ble-take and looked it up. Sure, the body was on the ground, but it was­n’t real­ly clear from the con­text what it meant. Besides, I’m try­ing not to count on my glean­ings from con­text any­more and just take the time to look up the words I don’t know.

Which, by the way, is why I’ve added a new cat­e­go­ry to the blog: Vocab.