Posted on 11/06/2023 12:47:28 PM PST by CheshireTheCat
On this date in 1793, Philippe Egalite was hoisted on his own petard.
To hoist with one’s own petard actually has an older derivation, dating to siege warfare engineers whose primitive bombs, petards, were liable to detonate unexpectedly and gave their makers a “hoist.”
Still, the phrase sounds like something that ought to come right out of the French Revolution, redolent (as are petards themselves: the explosive word is from the French “to fart”) of angry mobs hoisting aristocrats, as was their wont, up on pikestaffs and lampposts and … petards. Whatever those are.
Philippe Egalite — the Duke of Orleans, as he was known for most of his life — was such an aristocrat: in fact he was royalty, the First Prince of the Blood and a cousin to Louis XVI....
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
It was not safe to have a name like “Duke of” anything in Revolutionary France. You might lose your head...................
Sounds like the grandfather of today’s limousine liberals. They may end up facing the exact same fate...
Isn’t it “Hoist by” rather than “hoist on”?
From Wikipedia:
“Hoist with his own petard” is a phrase from a speech in William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet that has become proverbial. The phrase’s meaning is that a bomb-maker is blown (”hoist”, the past tense of “hoise”) off the ground by his own bomb (”petard”), and indicates an ironic reversal or poetic justice.
In modern vernacular usage of the idiom, the preposition “with” is commonly exchanged for a different preposition, particularly “by” (i.e. “hoist by his own petard”). The latter form is recognized by many British and American English dictionaries as an interchangeable alternative. Prepositions other than “by” and the original “with” are not widely accepted and may be seen as erroneous or even nonsensical in the correct context of the phrase.
It actually should be hoist by his own petard. Basically meaning, blown up by his own explosive device.
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