CT Blue

I just hope to [insert agnostic’s analogue of God here] that I used the word “etymology” correctly above. Here I toil away, sometimes posting three or four political posts a day with nary a comment, and I use a word wrong and I get in the middle of two English majors discussing the meaning, spelling and derivation of the word “petard“. In what is for this blog a virtual avalanche of comments (two if you don’t count mine) we learn more than we perhaps ever needed to know about said word. One thing’s for sure, I will never get that quote wrong again. On the other hand, if that’s what it takes to provoke comments, maybe I’ll bungle some more quotes to see if anyone catches me.

Here’s a cartoon “Dissenting Major” sent to me, which he didn’t know how to post directly in his comment, showing an earlier use of the phrase (quoted correctly, no doubt the cartoonist had an editor) for political purposes:

HOIST WITH HIS OWN PETARD.

Mr. Ramsay Macdonald (Champion of Independent Labour). “OF COURSE I’M ALL FOR PEACEFUL PICKETING—ON PRINCIPLE. BUT IT MUST BE APPLIED TO THE PROPER PARTIES.”