hoist with one's own petard or hoist by one's own petard
: victimized or hurt by one's own scheme
Did you know?
The connection between hoise and hoist is a bit confusing. The two words are essentially synonymous variants, but hoist is far more common; hoise and its inflected forms hoised and hoising are infrequently used. But a variant of its past participle shows up fairly frequently as part of a set expression. And now, here's the confusing part: that variant past participle is hoist! The expression is "hoist with (or by) one's own petard," which means "victimized or hurt by one's own scheme." This oft-heard phrase owes its popularity to William Shakespeare's Hamlet in which the titular character says, "For 'tis the sport to have the engineer hoist with his own petar[d]." (A petard is a medieval explosive. The quote implies that the engineer—the person who sets the explosive device—is blown into the air by the explosion of his own device.)
Word History
Etymology
alteration of hysse to hoist, perhaps from Low German hissen
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