•September 6, 2023•

By Jim Baumann

NP Guest Writer

It’s fun — and sometimes surprising — to learn the literal meanings of everyday phrases you use.

At least it is for Bill Murray and me.

Bill, of Palatine, is a very funny guy who spent 40 years on the other side of the camera in the world of television and who writes mini-books for family and friends with such titles as “News of the Whirled,” “New and Improved,” which is his take on advertising for unlikely products, and “Bolognia — An Official Archive,” his exploration of the nation of Bolognia, which naturally is a bunch of baloney.

“Susan Estrich’s Aug. 25 column on Rudy Giuliani’s fall from grace contained the phrase “ ... he never dreamed he would be hoisted on his own petard,’” he wrote in an email to me. “My recollection is that a petard was a small bomb mounted on a wooden pole or stick that a warrior placed against an enemy’s castle door or gate in the 17th century. Apparently the intent was to light the fuse, run up to the fortification, lay the petard against the target and run away before the explosion. If the fuse burned too quickly, or if he tripped along the way, the engineer could be blown into the air, ‘hoisted by’ not ‘hoisted on’ his own petard.”

I couldn’t recall whether Shakespeare coined the phrase “hoist with his own petard” in “Hamlet” or “Coriolanus,” but upon further investigation I found it in Act 3 of “Hamlet”:

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