i thought petard was a type of flag, like a pennant. you would hoist it to raise attention to a problem or to warn of danger... to be hoist by it meant that you just alerted others to yourself and your situation and failings.


nice little booklet in the Guardian about sayings and words.

Dictionary.com says:
"Word History: The French used pétard, “a loud discharge of intestinal gas,” for a kind of infernal engine for blasting through the gates of a city. “To be hoist by one's own petard,” a now proverbial phrase apparently originating with Shakespeare's Hamlet (around 1604) not long after the word entered English (around 1598), means “to blow oneself up with one's own bomb, be undone by one's own devices.” The French noun pet, “fart,” developed regularly from the Latin noun pditum, from the Indo-European root *pezd-, “fart.”"

seems the modern use of it is probably to gag at the smell of your own farts.

spooky.... i was just going to paste that exact same description!

Excellent - I have a french boss - I'll have to start dropping this into conversation and see if she sniggers.

Apparently signs on the side of the carriageway warning of "soft verges" are also likely to raise a Gallic titter.