Word: petard
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...instance, poetic justice did not wait for the moderates. One night last week in the Street of the Prophet, a gang of terrorists were literally hoisted on their own petard. Their car, a 1941 Plymouth, swerving under the impact of a British machine-gun burst, hit a traffic island. Then, with door open and amatol mines falling out, it swerved and hit a child, crumpled into a tree, and exploded, blowing the two occupants into tattered shreds. Several houses on both sides of the street collapsed as the mines went off. All that remained of one Arab-style villa...
Their Own Petard. Meanwhile, hundreds of miles to the north, Mitscher's air fleets had flown off the battle carriers' ample decks, long before dawn. They swooped out of the rising sun upon the ships which flew it as their battle flag. The U.S. flyers were amazed to find virtually no air opposition: the Japs had been caught in a variation of-the trick which had brought them disaster in June. Their carriers' planes were refueling on Luzon...
...Street courtyard facing the Varsity Club, the students of the oldest and most blase of America's universities will gather to steal a Big Green leaf out of Dartmouth's book by staging a mass rally in an effort to hoist the team from Hanover on its own enthusiastic petard...
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...