I received the following email from someone who calls himself my friend:<\/p>\n
One of the gimmicks I detest most is the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153$99 value, yours for only $24.99,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d…<\/p>\n
vs.<\/p>\n
Men, Women, and Girl Singers
\nRetail Price: $14.95
\nOnline Sale Price: $13.46\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\nThat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all it said, and the subject line was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153LOL\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
It had me scratching my head for a minute or three. The detested gimmick part came from my post on Friday<\/a><\/strong>, but $13.46? Where did that come from? I sell a few copies of my own book from time to time, but I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sell at a discount. I called my friend. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Where\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d you find that?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I asked. Now he really was laughing out loud. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You posted the link on your site.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n
DUH. <\/p>\n
After kicking myself three times and wishing for home, I tried to wiggle out of culpability \u00e2\u20ac\u201c after all, I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t come up with the price; that was my friends at ejazzlines. <\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You cash the checks?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he asked.<\/p>\n
Hoisted by my own petard.<\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a clich\u00c3\u00a9d phrase, and we know what it means, but do we really use the expression correctly? And what, exactly, is a petard? <\/p>\n
The word: I have always assumed that a petard was a rope. I fantasized that it was a nautical term, imagining a hanging by pirates at sea — I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know where I got that idea. I thought that to be hoisted by ones own petard was akin to being given enough rope to hang oneself. But a petard is not a rope, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a bomb. My Visual Thesaurus <\/em>by ThinkMap<\/a><\/strong> says that a petard is an explosive device from Medieval days (sometime between 300 and 1500 AD) used to break down as gate or wall. My Oxford English Dictionary<\/em> on CD-ROM is more specific, defining it as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A small bomb made of a metal or wooden box filled with powder, used to blow in a door etc. or to make a hole in a wall,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and citing first use as mid sixteenth century (specifically between 1530 and 1569). The derivation? P\u00c3\u00a9ter meaning \u00e2\u20ac\u0153break wind.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
The expression: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hoist with one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own petard\u00e2\u20ac\u009d was coined by Shakespeare in Hamlet <\/em>(sometime between 1600 and 1602) A Wikipedia entry<\/a><\/strong> explains <\/p>\n
The phrase is usually misquoted as “see the engineer hoist by his own petard” and is taken to mean “the hangman hanged with his own rope,”\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 Hamlet’s actual meaning is “cause the bomb maker to be blown into the air with his own bomb,” metaphorically turning the tables on Claudius, whose messengers are killed instead of Hamlet.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Wikipedia also asserts that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a petard was a 19th Century animal trap, consisting of a rope and a bent branch that caught the desired beast by one leg as it stepped into a loop in the rope and pulled it up into the air.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d However, I can not find any corroboration for this other than some online chatter that seems to have proliferated the aforementioned definition intact. There is no such mention in any of my reference books.<\/p>\n
In any case, the gist is being ruined by one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own devices, whatever that device may be…bomb, rope, or poison pen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I received the following email from someone who calls himself my friend: One of the gimmicks I detest most is the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153$99 value, yours for only $24.99,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d… vs. Men, Women, and Girl Singers Retail Price: $14.95 Online Sale Price: $13.46 That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all it said, and the subject line was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153LOL\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It had me scratching my … Continue reading “Hoisted By My Own Petard”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-n-that"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.devradowrite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}