Not that!

Oh, Lord, not defenestrated. That’s too horrible to contemplate.

I was editing a wire story about the Romanian Revolution in 1989 when I came to a sentence that said two men had been defenestrated.

Defenestrated! I had no idea what the word meant, but it smacked of some complicated medieval torture – perhaps being flayed, boiled in oil and drawn and quartered simultaneously.

I checked the dictionary, and it turned out that defenestration means being thrown from a window.

I’m opposed to being thrown from a window, but it sure sounds better than being defenestrated.