New Microsoft Windows chief 'shocked' by Sinofsky defenestration

theregister.co.uk

6 points·Cbasedlifeform··14 comments

For a minute I thought it wasn't a bad pun. Please enquote 'defenestration' instead of 'shocked'.

Minor quibble, there is a difference between being in a state of shock, and being shocked by an occurrence.

Makes no difference, most articles about this sort of thing tend to be on the level or reading tea leaves anyway.

Defenestration: Latin word for throwing someone out the window. While they may have done this figuratively, I do not think it means so literally. I'm sorry, but I can't help being a pedant.

It's a pun. He was the president of the Windows division!

huh? "defenestration" isn't a latin word, it's an english word derived from the latin.

Is it really latin? The reason I ask is Fenster is the German word for window.

It's a joke-in-a-word. I think it's funny.

Anybody here have enough Latin to come up with one for "under the bus"?

It'd be something like "sub omnibus", "bus" being etymologically kind of a weird word.

Ah, progress. I want a funny fake English word that is a calque from Latin and means "make something go under a bus" just like "defenestrate" means "make something go out of a window". It has to be easy to say so it stands a chance of catching on. Will pay five bucks.

$5 you say? There's a YC company in here somewhere!

So, you have a problem with the word "fired", too?

No, because that is used a lot more and isn't latin. It's just the combination of little use and latin that bugs me on the usage

You may find this speech by Stephen Fry of help.[1]

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7E-aoXLZGY

Never mind. I just realized the pun, and I can say I feel stupid right now. Sorry to anyone who I may have accidentally offended.

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