what is a pitard?

Question

as in 'he hung himself on his own pitard'

Answer 1

It is petard, as written in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

This evolved into the phrase you read, "hung by his own petard" to suggest he was done in by his own devices.

http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-pet1.htm

A petard was a bell-shaped metal grenade typically filled with five or six pounds of gunpowder and set off by a fuse.

Unfortunately, the devices were unreliable and often went off unexpectedly. Hence the expression, where hoist meant to be lifted up, an understated description of the result of being blown up by your own bomb.

The name of the device came from the Latin petar, to break wind (fart), perhaps a sarcastic comment about the thin noise of a muffled explosion at the far end of an excavation or the visible image you can picture of debry bursting out of a cave.

Answer 2

Sorry no such word!

petard (n.) A small bell-shaped bomb used to breach a gate or wall.
petard (n.) A loud firecracker

Also: a 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.


Jean Luc Picard - Star Trek Enterprise

Answer 3

Hung By His Own Petard

Answer 4

The French word pétard means "a loud discharge of intestinal gas," - not "silent but deadly" but a big ole noisy bi-labial fricative. "To be hoist by one's own petard," is a now proverbial phrase apparently originating with Shakespeare's Hamlet (around 1604) not long after the word entered English (around 1598). It means "to blow oneself up with one's own bomb, be undone by one's own devices." The French developed a kind of infernal engine, named the Petard, only about a decade before Shakespeare used the hoisting phrase in Hamlet, for blasting through the gates of a city. The French noun pet, "fart," developed regularly from the Latin noun pēditum, from the Indo-European root *pezd-, "fart." During WWII, the British had a munition also called the Flying Dustbin. which was a spigot mortar. It fired a 40-pound (18 kg) finned bomb at pillboxes and other concrete obstacles, to destroy them - but that was long after Hamlet was published.

Answer 5

Petard as in hoist by his own petard... a petard was a bomb or box like explosive for breaking down walls... and to be host by one's own petard is to be blown up by your own bomb... today we usually say shot himslef in the foot... to mean the same thing to hurt yourself

Answer 6

If it's not John Luke----, then it's like been caught in your own trap, metaphorically speaking. Petard is a box containing explosives, so perhaps they went of prematurely, killing the carrier instead of the intended target. (It is petard not pitard)

Answer 7

A petard was a type of bomb and the phrase was "hoist by his own petard." It meant he "blew himself up" figuratively or literally.

Answer 8

The word remains in modern usage in the phrase to be hoisted by one's own petard, which means 'to be harmed by one's own plan to harm someone else' or 'to fall in one's own trap'. Shakespeare coined the now proverbial phrase in Hamlet.

Answer 9

u mean "petard". and it was a small bomb, used for breaking down a wall. most often thrown by a person at the wall, sometimes resulting in the death of that person.

Answer 10

The captain of the "Enterprise" - Sean Luc Pitard!