hoist by one's own petard

sagehen sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM
Sat Jul 15 20:44:26 UTC 2006


>I realized that I was probably making some kind of mistake, but, I'm
>on vacation. Well, I guess that I could have googled it. I've seen an
>illustration of a petard - in this case, the petard was being used to
>blow down the door of a castle. So, I knew that it was a kind of
>large, primitive, shaped-charge bomb. And, given that "petard" is also
>a word for a gigantic fart and knowing Shakespeare's penchant for
>punning, I basically stabbed in the dark as to whether a person would
>be lifted "by" or "on" a petard. My choice was primarily influenced by
>those cartoon explosions in which the character caught in the
>explosion floats _on_ the cloud of expanding gasses.
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I had forgotten that /pet/  was also fart in French. /Pet de nonne/ is  a
sort of doughnut.
AM


 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
W stands for >:<  War ____Waste___Wiretaps____Witchhunts  >:<
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list