Choose the correct meaning of idiom: Hoist with one’s own petard

Correct — D. Hoist with one's own petard means harmed or ruined by the very scheme you set up to harm someone else.

A petard was a small bomb used to blow open gates and breach walls. Hoist is the old past participle of hoise, to lift.

The picture is an engineer blown into the air by his own charge → option (d).

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  He has benefited by sheer luck — Sheer luck puts chance in charge. The idiom turns on a man's own plotting, and it ends in his harm, not his benefit.
• (b)
  He has risen through deceit — Risen through deceit reads hoist as a promotion. The lift is an explosion: the deceiver's scheme backfires, so he falls rather than rises.
• (c)
  He has gained unearned praise — Unearned praise has nothing to do with the phrase. The idiom concerns a trap that springs on its own maker, and no credit is involved.

An idiom item tests a fixed phrase whose meaning is figurative. Here the figure is a siege weapon turning on its user.

The phrase comes from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4. Hamlet uses it as he plans to turn a plot against him back on the two schoolfellows carrying it out.

Today it describes any scheme that backfires on the person who planned it.

Key facts

• Hoist with one's own petard means harmed by one's own scheme against others.
• A petard was a small bomb used to blow open gates or breach walls.
• Hoist in the phrase is the old past participle of hoise, to lift.
• The phrase comes from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4.

Common traps

• Reading hoist in its modern sense, to raise, and picking He has risen through deceit
• Treating the idiom as a story of gain, when its point is that the schemer is harmed

No directly related past PYQ was found.