Hoist

Hoist with his own petard. Beaten with his own weapons, caught in his own trap. The petard was a thick iron engine, filled with gunpowder, and fastened to gates, barricades, and so on, to blow them up. The danger was lest the engineer who fired the petard should be blown up in the explosion.

“Let it work;

For ʹtis the sport to have the engineer

Hoist with his own petard; and it shall go hard

But I will delve one yard below their mines.

And blow them at the moon.”

Shakespeare: Hamlet, iii. 4.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.