Hacker News Reader

Comment by Spooky23 | Hacker News Reader

You missed the first part, which was “read the instructions”.

I worked at a store that heavily promoted these things to get foot traffic. The only people with problems were the people lining up on Sunday meaning to fill a cart with shit they didn’t need - or even know what it was to get it for “free”.

I remember one guy, who punched me in the mouth, screaming that he bought a scam video card “it doesn’t even play tapes” for $14.95 and didn’t get his $20 rebate for whatever reason. I think that he didn’t include the UPC code or something. The medical bills after I threw him out the window, the arrest and fine were a lot more than $14.95.

I used the free cd offers all of the time to get CD-Rs… we’d make custom mix CDs for the folks in our dorm.

View on HN

Throwing someone through a window may cross the line beyond self defense, but did the customer get charged too?

It’s an expression. Russians even take it further, ‘defenestration’!

I assume from the story those are the angry fellows charges not our hero protagonist.

One can not punch a person and not expect retaliation, even if that person you perceive to be a social inferior to you doing retail work.

Funny you took the complete opposite way that the clerk got in trouble.

Defenestration is a Czech expression (the Czech language works with Latin roots a lot, even has special grammar for it). Russians only adopted it.

Defenestration is a term coined to describe a political event in Prague but I'm not sure the word itself is Czech but is arguably French, Latin or English in origin.

> Though already existing in Middle French, the word defenestrate ("out of the window") is believed to have first been used in English in reference to the episodes in Prague in 1618 when the disgruntled Protestant estates threw two royal governors out of a window of the Hradčany Castle and wrote an extensive apologia explaining their action.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestrations_of_Prague

But that article has no citations for that claim...

Well I guess it depends on how you attribute words to languages. In Czech language it's standard practice to compose words with Latin stems. The word was originally written by a Czech person in a Czech language text using specialized Czech grammar for integration of Latin stems.

The prefix de- is used in Czech normally since forever and to this day (originally Latin though), the stem fenestra is Latin (not normally used in Czech), and the suffix -ace is Czech (Slavic origin).

BTW the quote you posted says the first usage in English language was in reference to the Czech text which actually coined it (thus the English text adopted it), not that it's English in origin.

> The prefix de- is used in Czech normally since forever and to this day

It's only used in loan words. Like "depilace" is a normally used loanword in Czech, non-loan word variant would be "odchlupeni". But "dechlupeni" (using "de-" instead of "od-" + native Czech word) would be completely nonsensical.

Claiming that "defenestrace" is originally a Czech word seems absurd to me. It might have been "invented" in Czech lands, but clearly from the latin form.

Hmm, a lot of Czech words aren't actually Czech, then. I think that makes even less sense. The fact is the Czech language loans heavily from many different languages (Latin being one of the top donors) - but that doesn't mean we speak a mix of languages in one sentence.

The prefix de- is not used only in loanwords, you can construct new words with it just fine. It doesn't sound right in your example but that doesn't mean it's nonsense.

"defenestrace" is a Czech word, "defenestration" is an English word, but they can both trace their origin to the latin "defenestratio".

> The prefix de- is not used only in loanwords, you can construct new words with it just fine.

Listing some examples would strengthen your argument immensely.

> It doesn't sound right in your example but that doesn't mean it's nonsense.

To my native ear, it sounds nonsensical. I wouldn't be able to guess what it is supposed to mean.

Defenestratio is not a Latin word, you wouldn't describe the act like that as a Latin speaker. You'd say something involving the words "de fenestra", but definitely not as one word.

It was the Czech person who first combined the Czech/Latin prefix, the Latin stem and the Czech/Slavic suffix in a decidedly Czech sentence.

> Listing some examples would strengthen your argument immensely.

You said one yourself. Nobody would say it because there's already a better way to say that, but everybody would understand the meaning and the grammar is fine.

"dechlupeni" is not a Czech word.

> but everybody would understand the meaning and the grammar is fine.

No, I certainly wouldn't. It's nonsense.

Can you name a word formed like that which is present in some dictionary?

Even if you're right about that, it still doesn't make the word Latin. Latin speakers wouldn't say it as one word, and there would also be a verb in a Latin sentence - "de fenestra" by itself is nonsense.

(I had the displeasure of studying Latin in school)

> Latin speakers wouldn't say it as one word

Note that all Latin speakers in that time period spoke Latin as their second (third...) language, and it was pretty common to see influence of other (mother) languages onto the used Latin. It wouldn't be surprising if e.g. a German native speaker (where such word concoctions are common place) coined such a Latin word.

It would also be unsurprising to see a native speaker of classical Latin coin such a Latin word. defenestro and defenestratio are perfectly compatible with the normal methods of word formation in classical Latin, which very rarely forms compound nouns, but which forms compounds of verbs with prepositional prefixes all the time. (Just in that last sentence, you can see the ghostly remains of perfectus [thoroughly-done], compono [with-put], praepositio [before-putting], and praefixus [before-fastened], all impeccably classical. You can also see compatior [with-endure], which does not seem to have existed in classical Latin, but is obviously derived in exactly the same way as the others.)

Here ( https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=defatigatio&la=... ) is a dictionary entry citing defatigatio to a speech given by Cicero.

Do you have sources or references for any of this? I can't find any sources that dig into by who or in what text "defenstrate" was originally coined. You say it is in reference to "the Czech text" but don't clarify which text you qre talking about? The quote is posted makes no reference to any text...

The best discussion of the original formation of the word I have been able to find was here: https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/35905/did-a-...

its a czech practice with few town-hall people in Prague few centuries ago IIRC, not a czech word per se

I think the Czech term is "Defenestrace"

Is that related to strace? Or maybe dtrace.

Defenestration and defenéstrate are words in English and Spanish as well. It’s a common concept

Not to be mistaken with transfenestration which is something you do yearly to prove you are still insane and keep getting your check.

HN doesn’t get Pynchon references. Interesting.

Defenestration is an old term in tech circles which meant just the opposite - throw Windows out of your computer

Wouldn’t the Russian way be more ‘defenestrecution’?

The guy jumped me as I retreated and got tossed away from the crowd. (Hell I was making $4.50/hr + spiffs, not there to fight people) Fortunately, I spent most of my teenage years doing farm work, and it was all caught on camera.

The cops thought it was great. My boss not so much. The whole thing was absurd - an adult attacking a 19 year old over a few dollars.

The world would be a much better place if more hackernews comments could include the phrase "I threw him out the window".

/r/ThatHappened

Reply on news.ycombinator.com