As anyone who knows me is aware, I am a big fan of words. Not just because they allow us a level of communication that no other animal can enjoy (something I explain to every dog I meet), but because they’re so weird and specific. Like the word ‘remarkable’: it literally means something is worth remarking on. Which is what you’re doing, by saying remarkable. Which means something is worth remarking on. It enters this odd undulating whirlpool of complete non-meaning. Or there’s the Bazooka: the explosive device was named as such because it resembled an instrument prototype created by comedian Bob Burns. The thing was nothing more then a tube with a whiskey funnel attached and is on record as sounding like a wounded moose. But these words are pretty easy to trace back to their origins; today I wanted to talk about the word ‘petard’, a word that isn’t used much outside of its well-known idiom.
The namesake of the anti-tank weapon. Another fun fact: the namesake of Bazooka Joe! EVERYONE IS JUST RIPPING OFF BOB BURNS.
That’s right, because of a certain phrase a certain Bill Shakespeare coined in a certain play called Hamlet, we all know what it means to be “hoisted on your own petard”. The essential meaning: you screwed up ironically and it’s your own fault. Like when you ask that one lonely wallflower to dance because they look so pitiable and you wind up with a brand new stalker, or when you ambitiously try to gain the attention of a special someone with a fancy meal that ends up tasting like a bag of shellfish someone forgot under a radiator. I digress. A petard is a small bomb used to break holes in doors and walls that entered use around 1590, and is a straight-to-the-point box filled with gunpowder. It’s as crude a result as you can get when you hand an engineer $5 and say “build something that removes bits of people I don’t like”. However, that’s not the real origin of the word. The bomb’s name came from a much more organic kind of explosion that we are all very familiar with…
That little cylinder against the gate is the petard, being hoisted into place with that odd crane on wheels. I don’t know why those men want into such a tiny fortification.
Petard comes from the Middle French verb péter, which literally means “to fart”. I know, I know, it sounds petarded. (sorry) There really are only two reasons why the wordsmiths at the time could have drawn a parallel between a vicious weapon meant to blow your feet off and a good old-fashioned pants yodel: either this naming committee was composed entirely of giggling 13-year old boys, or the average 16th century diet lent people’s flatulence the power to blow circular holes through their pants/other fortifications. Seriously though, it’s likely because the bombs themselves sounded hilarious due to their small size, or because they had a telltale scent – used gunpowder smells distinctly of rotten eggs due to its sulfur content, and is not something you’d want to be stuck in an elevator with. The use of the word is actually pretty logical: what is a fart but a body’s explosion? In either case, you just have to be careful of any shrapnel.
“The vote count is in: 7 for petard, 6 for fartystinkers. Petard wins by a narrow margin! Dismissed for nap time!”
This has the bonus of changing the meaning of Shakespeare’s phrase from “I laid a well-intentioned but needlessly complex plan that literally blew up in my face” to “I farted and it smelled and it ruined everything.” It’s pretty easy to see how he came up with such a clever turn of phrase: every time you are using a bomb, you’re gambling with your life. Ever gambled on a fart? Yes you have. Don’t lie. It’s not attractive. You know how it feels to attempt something risky, only to have it backfire with horrific consequences; it only makes sense that the words should be interchangeable. It also means that Mr. Shakespeare, remembered by high school students everywhere as a paragon of dry, refined Elizabethan intellect, was definitely making a fart joke. Try and picture the squire, he himself imagining a person rocketed into the air by their own backwards burp. I’m surprised he managed to stop laughing long enough to write it down.
“I love fart jokes. I’m farting right now.” – William Shakespeare, probably.
Don’t be sad that something as legitimately awesome as a personal explosive device has such stinky origins, though. I get the feeling if you look back far enough in any word’s history it was probably somehow informed by this act of intestinal fortitude. And if not that specific bodily function, then some other equally disgusting process. Even the word feisty was once used as an adjective specifically for gassy old women with tiny dogs. I’m amazed that such a specific situation required its own word, but there was a need for it and the 13 year old naming committee was up to the task. Now I need to wrap this up because I’ve run out of fun ways to describing farting.
Want to read more about words and stuff?
There’s the time I wrote about how words change meaning with age and context, that one’s fun!
This one has passing mention of Shakespeare and is all about the Fifth Element and violence!
Dick Navis' Noun Dreams 