'He was hoist by his own petard' refers to

Correct — A, (a) He had problems as a result of his own plans to hurt others.

The phrase is Shakespeare’s. In ‘Hamlet’, Hamlet says of the men carrying the King’s sealed order for his death that it is sport to have ‘the enginer hoist with his own petard’. A petard was a small bomb — a metal container of gunpowder — fixed against a door or a gate to blow it in, and the ‘enginer’ was the military engineer who placed it. To be hoist is to be lifted, here blown into the air. The picture is of the bomb-maker destroyed by the very device he built for somebody else, and the phrase has passed into ordinary English as the name for that ironic reversal: a person brought down by his own scheme against others.

That is exactly what the keyed option says — he had problems as a result of his own plans to hurt others. Both halves of the idiom are there: the plans were aimed at somebody else, and the harm came back on the planner. An option that keeps only one half will not do. A man who simply meets misfortune has not been hoist by his own petard; a man whose honest project fails has not either. The reversal must be self-inflicted, and it must be the recoil of something meant to injure.

One printing note that helps a reader rather than hinders him: Shakespeare wrote ‘with his own petard’, and modern English more often says ‘by his own petard’, as this paper does. Both are accepted; the sense is unchanged.

Why the others are wrong

• (b)He was high up on the pole — ‘He was high up on the pole’ is the option built by reading one word and ignoring the rest. ‘Hoist’ is a familiar English verb — to raise something with a rope or a tackle, as a flag is hoisted — so a candidate who recognises it and does not recognise ‘petard’ can construct a picture of a man raised high, and then find something pole-like to put him on. What is lost is everything the idiom actually says. In the phrase, ‘hoist’ is the old past participle of ‘hoise’, and the lifting is not deliberate elevation but the upward blast of an explosion; the petard is the bomb that does it; and the point of the whole expression is whose bomb it was. The lesson generalises: when an unfamiliar word sits inside a fixed phrase, the meaning of the phrase cannot be recovered by translating the words you do know and skipping the one you do not.
• (c)He would usually run away from trouble — ‘He would usually run away from trouble’ describes a habit of avoidance, and the idiom describes a single ironic catastrophe. Nothing in the phrase suggests either cowardice or repetition — ‘was hoist’ names one event that has already happened, not a tendency. English does have a well-stocked set of idioms for the man who runs from trouble: to turn tail, to take to one’s heels, to show a clean pair of heels, to give somebody a wide berth. Keeping those separate from the idioms of self-inflicted ruin is the useful distinction here. It is also worth noticing what this option has in common with the last one: both are the sort of general character sketch that can be attached to almost any sentence about a man in difficulty, which is precisely why an option list uses them.
• (d)He was indifferent to his surroundings — ‘He was indifferent to his surroundings’ has no connection with the phrase at all, and is the fourth option that a set of four requires. It is still instructive, because it shows the shape of a filler: a neutral, unobjectionable description that neither contradicts the stem nor answers it. A candidate who has no idea what a petard is may be drawn to a colourless option on the grounds that it is safe, and colourless options are never safe — an examiner does not offer a wrong answer that is hard to argue against, he offers one that is easy to overlook. The efficient method with an unknown idiom is the opposite of caution: identify the one option that describes a specific, dramatic, ironic event, because idioms that survive four centuries are rarely about mild indifference.

The idiom names a particular kind of irony: the harm you intended for somebody else falling on you instead. English has several ways of saying it — to be caught in one’s own trap, to be hoist by one’s own petard, the biter bit, to dig a pit and fall into it, to sow the wind and reap the whirlwind — and they are not quite interchangeable in tone. ‘Hoist by his own petard’ is the literary one, and it carries a note of grim comedy, because the original picture is an explosion.

The words repay unpacking. A petard, from a French verb, was a small siege bomb clapped against a gate to break it open; the men who placed them worked at close quarters and were in obvious danger from their own charges. ‘Hoist’ is the past participle of the older verb ‘hoise’, meaning to lift, and the modern regular form ‘hoisted’ has replaced it everywhere except inside this phrase. That is a common fate for old grammar: it survives fossilised in an idiom long after it has died in ordinary speech.

The transferable skill is reading an idiom for its structure rather than its vocabulary. Here the structure is: agent builds device to harm another; device harms agent. Any option that omits the intent to harm, or omits the recoil, is describing something else, and that test settles the item even for a candidate who has never seen the word ‘petard’.

Key facts

• ‘Hoist by (or with) his own petard’ means brought to grief by the very scheme he devised against somebody else.
• It comes from Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’, where the line runs ‘to have the enginer hoist with his own petard’.
• A petard was a small gunpowder bomb fixed to a door or gate to blow it open; the ‘enginer’ was the soldier who placed it.
• ‘Hoist’ here is the old past participle of the verb ‘hoise’, to lift — preserved inside the idiom although ordinary English now says ‘hoisted’.
• Shakespeare’s preposition was ‘with’; modern usage, including this paper, more often prints ‘by’, and both are accepted.

Common traps

• Translating the one familiar word. ‘Hoist’ alone suggests being lifted up, and an option is waiting that says exactly that.
• Dropping the intent to harm. An ordinary misfortune, however severe, is not being hoist by one’s own petard.
• Reading the phrase as a description of character rather than of a single event; three of these four options describe habits or states.
• Assuming the archaic word must be decoded before the item can be answered. The structure of the sentence gives the answer without it.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  ‘The minister’s attempt to leak the file against his rival left him facing an inquiry himself.’ Which expression best describes what happened to the minister ?

  • (a)He turned over a new leaf
  • (b)He was hoist by his own petard
  • (c)He buried the hatchet
  • (d)He passed the buck

  Answer(b) He was hoist by his own petard — the scheme he built to injure somebody else recoiled on him, which is precisely what the idiom names. Option (a) means to reform, option (c) to make peace, and option (d) to shift responsibility to another; none of them involves a plan rebounding on its author.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In the phrase ‘hoist by his own petard’, the word ‘petard’ originally meant

  • (a)a flagpole
  • (b)a small bomb used to breach a door or gate
  • (c)a heavy rope and pulley
  • (d)a suit of armour

  Answer(b) a small bomb used to breach a door or gate — the petard was a gunpowder charge placed against an obstacle by a military engineer, and the idiom pictures that engineer blown up by it. Options (a) and (c) come from reading ‘hoist’ as ordinary lifting, and option (d) has no connection with the word.