> 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...
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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?
(I had the displeasure of studying Latin in school)
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.
Here ( https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=defatigatio&la=... ) is a dictionary entry citing defatigatio to a speech given by Cicero.
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-...