Hoist By His Own Petard is getting misused.: Hoist By His Own Petard

People understand the idiom to both literally mean "Killed by one's own plan" and "To receive one's comeuppance by something they set up." No point in defining the idiom literally when it's not used exclusively that way.

If your solution for the more specific version is to change the original metaphor by substituting a synonym, though, it doesn't make sense to retain the original phrasing, because all that does is make a Snowclone for the sake of a Snowclone. May as well go with Killed By His Own Death Ray or...whatever...something else.

edited 20th Mar '11 5:56:38 PM by troacctid

I never stated that to be my solution, and I have no clue what you're talking about.

Killed By His Own Death Ray, although, is unfortunately not a pre-existing term.

edited 20th Mar '11 6:15:13 PM by SeanMurrayI

This is still not resolved.

My proposal: Split.

Hoist by His Own Petard: His plan backfired. Xanatos Bacfire will redirect here. Killed By His Own Petard (yes, I know they mean the same thing): His plan/weapon killed him.

OK?

If you're going to outright acknowledge in your own proposal that Hoist by His Own Petard and Killed By His Own Petard mean the same thing, then no, having them refer to separate things would not be okay.

edited 2nd Jun '11 9:04:48 AM by SeanMurrayI

Yes, then it becomes The Same But More Specific.

edited 2nd Jun '11 9:33:15 AM by Stratadrake

If the phrase means something more general than the trope is intended to describe, then we can broaden the definition to match the meaning of the phrase. There's precedent for this. If, after doing so, a more specific subtrope is identified, we can split that off, but I'm not seeing it here.

edited 2nd Jun '11 10:01:26 AM by Fighteer

Yeah, I'm in favor of broadening the definition to mean what people normally use it to mean and not splitting. Separate tropes for "harmed by one's own plan/weapon" and "killed by one's own plan/weapon" smells of The Same But More to me.

Let's bump this. And call for a proposal:

Hoist by His Own Petard will be, from now on, what it means in idiomatic English: the plan, however simple or complex, backfires on the one who planned it, fatally or otherwise.

I like this proposal.

That sounds like a great plan to me.

Sounds good. Someone want to propose a new description?

Do we really need three paragraphs about petards in the description?

No.

N'thing the Proposal.

I shortened the description a tad for everyone's sake, as well as explicitly expanding the definition. I also took the unnecessary filler out of the origin of the term. Is it good, or should I have left more in?

It occurs to me that there is in fact a phrase that is used both in the metaphoracal sense of a plan (not neccissarily a malicious one) backfiring on you, and the litteral sense from which this trope gets its origin, but can be seen without the death/going flying, especially in works by Warner Bros: Well That Blew Up In My Face perhaps that could be a suppertrope for the less violent examples, or an alternate title for this one with the acceptance that the current title is a more general trope than a death trope. Note after all that in fictionland being hoist by an explossion, is not necessarily fatal.

The current description is only about weapons. If consensus is that it should be widened to include plans as well (which it seems to be), the page needs further re-writing...

...and it would be related to Gone Horribly Right at some point, too.

And Voila. By changing 2 words, the article is now about weapons, schemes, and traps.

I'll add that Gone Horribly Right is related.

Anything else to be done?

Bumpeth.

edited 10th Nov '11 11:07:27 AM by SalFishFin

This thread has gone cold and it seems like its resolved its problem. How about locking it up?