This week’s words all have to do with public ignominy…
ex·co·ri·ate: to tear or wear off the skin of; abrade. To censure strongly; denounce.
op·pro·bri·um: disgrace arising from exceedingly shameful conduct
au·to-da-fe: public announcement of the sentences imposed on persons tried by the Inquisition and the public execution of those sentences by the secular authorities.
de·fen·es·tra·tion: the act of throwing someone or something out of a window.
I particularly like defenestration. I first came across the word a few years ago in a European text and asked a friend of mine who was a history major what it meant. Apparently, defenestration was a fashionable form of political protest in medieval eastern Europe. According to a report on the Radio Prague website:
“One of the most bizarre and typically Czech ways of dealing with opposition was the so called defenestration. The first one, which took place in 1419 in Prague, set off the Hussite revolution, while the most famous defenestration, which took place in May 1618, led to the uprising of the Czech Estates and marked the beginning of the Thirty Year War in Europe. In the 17th century, defenestrations were considered as a kind of Czech national custom…”
In contemporary jargon, Defenstration has become a popular term to refer to the act of removing Microsoft Windows © from a PC in favor of another operating system. I like that, too!