Re: That's "Hoist with" That's "Hoist by" ... (was: Hoist with own petard)
"So the peasant (or what was left of him) would be thrown into the air by the device. However, as the remains of the petard would be heading skyward with him, both could be said to be grammatically correct;"
The petard is the tool of the associated action (hoisting), so we might expect 'with' (not used here to imply 'accompanying') rather than 'by' - but this does appear to be a gray area.
"although I doubt that the poor peasant would be overly concerned about the niceties of grammar in this case!"
Very true !
Biting the hand that feeds IT
