Hoy la palabra es: petardos.
Hmm, as in ‘hoisted by his own petardos‘?
It’s an expression we often use in English, but what actually is a petard? And how can you be hoisted by one?
In English, petard is the name of a small bomb, like a large grenade, which was used in the Middle Ages to break down walls and gates. The soldiers would hang the petard on the walls, light the fuse and ka-boom! Fortifications blown apart. If they didn’t move in time, or didn’t move to the right place, a soldier could be ‘hoisted’ – literally lifted into the air – ‘by his own petard’.
Amusingly, our English word comes from the French word peter, to break wind. (Bad news for anyone called Peter.)
So nowadays, we say ‘hoisted by his own petard’ to mean a plan to damage someone else has actually damaged the planner himself. Or he’s fallen into his own trap. Good ol’ Shakespeare might have come up with the expression – he uses it in Hamlet and it’s the first time it appears in print.
Back to Spanish. In modern French, petard = firework. And so in Spanish:
petardos = fireworks
🙂
Sooze is... away 