Word: petard
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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When a writer's imagination is as great as moral indignation, he is likely to produce a fantasy. In an environment of pure invention, heroes are twice as heroic. villains twice as villainous and life's follies doubly absurd. Toward the petard of such celebrated masters of adult make-believe as Jonathan Swift and Samuel Butler. Thomas Stanley Matthews has hoisted himself with a nightmare called The Moon's No Fool...
Against a Dominion citizen no weapon is so keen in the Mother Country as a well-bred accusation of "bad taste" murmured by some Briton. Paradoxically the Royal Family were themselves gently hoist by this petard last week. It was not in good taste, loyal London felt, for the engagement of H. R. H. the Duke of Gloucester to be made public last week a few hours after the tragic death of H. M. the Queen of the Belgians became known...
Coach Charlie Whiteside was very nearly hoist by his own petard yesterday when fire broke out on the launch "Frank Thompson" opposite the Watertown Arsenal. Gasoline in the bilge was ignited by a backfire, and in seconds only the crew was scrambling over the stone wall on the Cambridge side loudly cheered by the watching jolly boaters...
With an ironic urbanity that used to be considered the sole property of such Frenchmen as the late Anatole France, but which a few U. S. contemporary writers have been able to show will look well on anybody, Author Hillel Bernstein hoists France with its own petard. In quiet but telling accents that should bring tears of joy to many a Yankee eye he tells a burlesque tale that is at the same time an uproariously effective caricature of French politics, French traits. Henry Jones, solemn U. S. citizen temporarily resident in Paris while writing a cookbook designed to glorify...
Beer has come in, quietly and calmly, to the delight of its protagonists; the calamity howlers are confounded, and hoist by their own petard; an emasculated Bacchus reigns in the Hub. This lack of the predicted drunkenness has been touted in the papers and by the people; but the fact that the advent of beer was attended by every conceivable trouble save that rather pleasant one of inebriety has been generally glossed over. The control measure itself was passed at the last minute, after the legislators, doddering cheerfully along in pursuit of such problems as the feasibility of serving beer...