When screened-in porches just won't do

For every cricket in existence, technology owns a bug itself. Tech support operators equal, if not exceed, the number of exterminators on the planet (ducks and bats and the like not included). Malfunctioning machines and insects are so numerous, and so akin - they buzz, hum, annoy and require monthly maintenance to prevent - that at times they just beg you to open the window and let them out.

With that in mind, the subject of today's blog proceeds accordingly:

the word "defenestrate."





Hehehehe...had you going there, didn't I?

The word "defenestrate" originated in the early 1600s* and comes from the root "fenestra," Latin for window. Parsed up into de/fenestrate, it means in this case out of/window - literally, "the act of throwing something, or especially someone, out of a window."

Probably the most famous defenestrations in history were the First and Second Defenestrations of Prague. Even if you were an attentive scholar, you probably thought there was only one famous Czech window-toss.**

Though it wasn't called a defenestration until its successor made history, the First Defenestration of Prague occurred on July 30, 1419. It began with the march of an armed congregation of Czech Hussites through the streets of Prague, protesting the imprisonment of several of their fellows. They marched to the New Town Hall, where the Catholic councilors refused to even make a prisoner exchange.

That's when an Anti-Hussite had the bright idea of throwing a rock*** at one of the protesters.

What goes up must come down. Several of the crowd stormed the New Town Hall and all seven of the councilors came down, through the window and onto the upright spears of the protesters below.

For the Protestants in 1618 who had heard of this former triumph, the preliminaries to the Second Defenestration must have seemed déjà vu. In 1617, Roman Catholic bigwigs ordered builders to abandon construction of several Protestant churches on allegedly Church-owned land. The Protestants claimed it belonged to the king and was, therefore, theirs upon which to build. They treated this development as the denial of a basic right, and feared the denial of other rights for Protestants was soon to follow.

After a few meetings, the riled non-Catholic nobility barged into the Bohemian Chancellery at Prague Castle. The crowd tried two despised governors, both staunchly Catholic and notorious persecutors of Protestants, for violating the Right of Freedom of Religion.****

Old habits die hard, and amid cheers and shattered glass, the convicted and their scribe plummeted 16 meters (that's 52.5 feet, folks) to the ground.


The governors and scribe fell not onto skull-cracking cobblestones, but - some said providentially, others said coincidentally - onto a large pile of manure, and thereby survived the drop unscathed.

Though punished capitally for such high-rise aristicide, Czech Protestants certainly knew how to make an exit.

Comic book fans might remember another notable defenestration, given the recent movie adaptation of the timeless series: Watchmen. While the movie's version isn't quite true to that of the book, it's nonetheless impressive.

Even more impressive: a reverse defenestration, courtesy of Chuck Norris.

So remember, kids, if you ever get kidnapped and held for questioning under pain of death by Czech hypernationalists who despise everything your c0untry stands for, there are worse ways to die. And luckily, it doesn't always work!*****


Information purloined from dictionary.com, New World Encyclopedia, OnlineConversion.com; picture purloined from Wikimedia Commons





* - though arguably if this part of the Old Testament is true, Jezebel might've been the first
** - Unless you count when the Scottish ambassador challenged the king to a cathedral caber-toss
*** - Or petrojected (petro = rock/ject = to throw) at one of the protesters!******
**** - And we're not taking a cue from the Czechs about punishment for First Amendment violators because...?
***** - Defenestration into a railroad spike factory Dumpster greatly diminishes the likelihood of survival
****** - seeing as I only wish this word existed, I do not endorse its use in Scrabble

"Give 'im a taste of the boatswain's rope-end, early in the morning!"

One of the prerequisites for sons of veterinarians is an appreciation for animals. I've owned cats all my life, and my parents adopted a rescue dog several years ago, with whom I promptly fell in love. The photo at the left is of me and said dog, Maggie.

Let's make it clear that I'm an equal-opportunity zoophile (ZU-oh-fyle; and not of the sexual kind, smartalecks) before I make an entry for this misunderstood idiom, because
1) I am neither a strict cat person nor a strict dog person
2) I dislike cruelty to animals as much as the next person
3) my father might disown me if he thought otherwise*

With that said, today's entry is a seafaring phrase (notice a pattern?) reviled for its presumed association to animal cruelty: enough room to swing a cat.

The "cat" in this phrase refers to a nasty whip known as a cat o' nine tails, used to punish lawbreaking sailors in the British Royal Navy until the 1800s. This flogging occurred on deck in full view, because below deck the ceilings were too low for the boatswain's (pronounced BO-sun's) mate to swing the whip.

Though other variations existed, the naval cat was made out of rope. Colonial-era rope was made of three thin ropes, each composed of three strands of cotton yarn - when unraveled at the end, nine separate strings would result, giving the whip its nine tails.**

The jury is out on whether they were usually knotted, but most accounts maintain they were. Each would cause intense pain when striping an insubordinate's back. If the crime was theft, the mate would employ the thieves' cat, each of its thongs knotted three times for additional pain (see right). Theft was an especially serious crime aboard a naval vessel.***

Several regulations about usage of the whip existed, but as we innovative humans often do, captains found ways to circumvent them. Though floggings exceeding 12 lashes were subject to court martial, captains often got away with as many as 72 without being caught. The mate put all of his strength into each blow, and if the captain decreed more lashes, another man would deliver the next set of 12 to ensure the punishment's severity.

The song "What Shall We Do with a Drunken Sailor" features a pseudonym for the cat, "the captain's daughter," seeing as in theory the cat was used only with his permission. Whether your version of the song says "give him a taste of the captain's daughter" or "put him in the bed with the captain's daughter," the singers are asking for a flogging.****

That the song requests this punishment doesn't surprise me. Punishment in British, colonial and piratical societies alike was public spectacle. People treated hangings and clapping a criminal in stocks as we might a free benefit concert or a fistfight in the schoolyard.

Nowadays, the use of the cat tends to be a private matter, as any BDSM devotee will discreetly***** tell you. Funny how what was once punishment, some of us today do voluntarily. Maybe some royal sailors deliberately violated the law? Who knows. What I do know is that where our contemporaries want to swing the cat, there's always [a] room [in which] to do it.



Information purloined from Captain Blood's Cove, Broadside, pride-unlimited.com, Pirates of the Caribbean: A Pyrate's Life, dictionary.reference.com; images purloined from Wikimedia Commons and my personal album



* - I may or may not have once fed Maggie a Jujube to point and laugh at her (and I'm kidding about that disownment part)
** - Any thoughts on why people have said cats have nine lives, besides surviving falls from great heights?
*** - one flaskful of liquor smuggled aboard could buy a lot of hardtack - we're talking, like, a 1:5 ratio here******
**** - if you were lucky, maybe even from the captain's daughter*******
***** - or vocally and in graphic detail
****** - What? It works as a deadly projectile if you don't have a rock...
******* - Before anybody gets excited about the further possibility for pirate pornography - yes, there is already a multimillion-dollar two-part series - bringing a woman or young boy aboard was punishable by death.