hoist by one's own petard

[Wilson Gray]

You've seen a petard, then? ;-) IAC, I don't think that anyone thought
that I meant "shaped charge" in the modern sense. Well, I guess that
you did or you wouldn't have replied. I meant only that the charge
conformed to the shape of its container. A crude representation - not
the same as the illustration that I have in memory, but, nevertheless,
it's close enough for government work - of a 17th-century petard can
be found at

<www.tech.org/~cleary/petard.jpg/>

What shows up on my screen as a hyphen is actually a tilde. If this
doesn't work, try googling In Images for "petard ordnance"

-Wilson


On 7/16/06, James A. Landau <JJJRLandau at netscape.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "James A. Landau" <JJJRLandau at NETSCAPE.COM>
> Subject:      Re: hoist by one's own petard
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> For the record, a petard is not a "shaped charge."  The principal behind the shaped charge was discovered by Munro in the 1880's and, as far as I know, first used in World War II in rocket-propelled anti-tank missiles such as the British PIAT, the German Panzerfaust, and the US bazooka.
>
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