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Cake day: Feb 26, 2024

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The french used to use an explosive device called a “petard” (old french for a fart), that was used to breach doors. However these would sometimes blow back and kill the user rather than breach the door. This was the original intention for the Shakespearian phrase. One was Hoisted (old verb* not used anymore but essentially blown off their feet) by their own Petard (or door breaching bomb).

More information is here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoist_with_his_own_petard

*Unrelated to hoist as in to lift, despite similarities


When I was at school (UK) there was a German girl and a Swiss girl talking in German and one of them said “Scheiser” really loudly, the teacher turnes and glared at them and slowly they realised why and had to apologise to the teacher, as they hadn’t really thought that while he couldn’t understand, he still knew the swear words!

Wasn’t a big deal was just funny and everyone laughed (incl teacher), needless to say they were a bit more cautious after that.