Tue, 3 Sep 2002 07:17:00[GMT +1000] (5:17 PM EDST) Terry Buchanan Home wrote:
> A petard was a bell-shaped metal grenade typically filled with five or six pounds of >gunpowder and set off by a fuse. > Sappers dug a tunnel or covered trench up to a building and fixed the device to a >door, barricade, drawbridge or the > like to break it open. The bomb was held in place with a heavy beam called a madrier. > 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, perhaps a sarcastic >comment about the thin noise of > a muffled explosion at the far end of an excavation. Very interesting. Grotesque, but very interesting. -- Dan (with a nod to Artie Jonson of "Laugh In" Using The Bat! v1.61 on Windows 95 4.0 Build 1111 B -- Daniel A. Grunberg Kensington, Maryland, USA homepage: www.nyx.net/~dgrunber/ ________________________________________________ Current version is 1.61 | "Using TBUDL" information: http://www.silverstones.com/thebat/TBUDLInfo.html
