Of petards and pedantry

Sir, – The unfortunate Bo Xilai found himself used as a filler for your August 11th editorial space, “Hoist, it might be said…

Sir, – The unfortunate Bo Xilai found himself used as a filler for your August 11th editorial space, “Hoist, it might be said, on his own petard”.

Indeed, it might, at least by the poor suckers looking to that space for a primer on how to string words together. It was a woeful dereliction of your duty to eradicate, erase, or eructate their errata that associate hoist with the cherry-picker machine that a man would use to get up to change a light bulb on a street lamp and petard with something he might try for stability at that elevation.

Will you indulge a pedant wishing to point out that hoise has fallen into disuse and that petard, it is to be hoped, has suffered a similar fate, having been a little bomb that was used to burst open a gate by a man who did not have a key? If, while he was fixing it in position, it blew up in his face, he would be hoist with, not on, his own petard. – Yours, etc,

FRANK FARRELL,

Lakelands Close,

Stillorgan,

Co Dublin.