Defenestrate is a nice long word which means chucking stuff out of windows. This practice, if adhered to in the right spirit, should take place preferably from a great height. Many things are traditionally defenestrated: televisions, guitars, minibars, in fact the contents of any major music star's hotel room.

Bricks can also be defenestrated, although the correct term for this is infenestration, as the bricks tend to be thrown in through the windows rather than out of them. If you throw bricks out of windows for no good reason, then you are not only a danger to yourself, but also to others.

The national practice of defenestration began in the Middle Ages, when housewives would gather all household excrement in pails, buckets and suchlike, and hurl it out of the window at passers-by.

Embittered spouses/significant/insignificant others often practice defenestration in highly specific ways, such as:

• Bobbittizing
  Perhaps the most famous specialisation of defenestration which involves throwing a recently removed body part out of the window of a moving vehicle. This requires some advance preparation, namely the removal of the wayward body part from the body. Due to a high probability of resistance from the 'donor' and severe consequences should local authorities view the defenestration as anything other than a 'harmless prank', this specialisation is only practised by very highly motivated and embittered practitioners.

• Delayed Action Defenestration
  This variant is often practised upon TV sets, and seems to follow a weekend of heavy football viewing accompanied by much beer drinking and carousing with 'the boys'. This masks repeated requests from a spouse or housemate to mow the lawn or clean the garage or fix the dishwasher. The avid football fan congratulates himself on having escaped this task, and so is dumbfounded to return home from work on Monday expecting to view more football, only to find the TV set in the front yard and the front window shattered.

• Full contact
  A spur of the moment defenestration occurring when the hand is quicker than the eye. Namely, when a spouse is trying to get the attention of their other half at a party, but his eye refuses to leave the charms of the woman across the room, resulting in a quick shove, and a flailing flight of a punchbowl towards the patio three floors below.