I got it wrong for so many years

Hoisting a Flag


Do you know or use the phrase "hoist by his (her) own petard".

It's used in situations such as this:

1. When I told my friends S and R that I hated the use of the b..ch word in reference to women, and a bit later referred to a woman I know as a b..ch.  S and R caught me  -  rightly so.

2. When a vociferous republican anti-gay politician is "caught" soliciting gay sex (it's happened more than once).

3. When a liberal democratic  politician is so very firm in his support of battered woman,  only to be exposed as a batterer.

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I'd thought for the longest time that "petard'  referred to a Naval Flag (such things are "hoisted").  When visiting my friend Jack Chrisman (USN Captain Ret.) I asked him about this.  He had no idea.

Jack and his souse  Donna have a daughter Ashley L. who looked up the phrase via Google.

 She discovered that Wm. Shakespeare used the phrase in Hamlet.

 It transpires that petard means " a small bomb". To be hoist (thrown up into the air) by one's own petard  means that a bomb you planned for others killed you. That makes sense.

 But wait, there is more!  (I like this!).

 "Petard"  is rooted in a French idiomatic word which means "to fart".

 Oh how delicious!   To be hoist by one's petard can be understood as "to be destroyed by one's own fart".

 'Tis a colourful use of language -  so much the better for that!



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