D
**DONOTDELETE**
Guest
just couldn't let this gem of research be lost to the ages...
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Originally posted by Bigwuss:
"Yeah, while we are on the topic of weird stuff, what the
heck is a Brigadier? I know what a Brigadier General is,
but have no idea what a Brigadier is.
I assume it is an old english term reffering to the
commander of a Brigade, Is that correct? "
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here's what I got from Dr. Dictionary for brigadier:
brigadier
general \Brig`a*dier" gen"er*al\ [F. brigadier, fr. brigade.] (Mil.) An officer in rank next above a colonel, and below a major general. He commands a brigade, and is sometimes called, by a shortening of his title, simply a brigadier.
Also of interest is the 'grenadier':
\Gren`a*dier"\, n. [F. grenadier. See Grenade.] 1. (Mil.) Originally, a soldier who carried and threw grenades; afterward, one of a company attached to each regiment or battalion, taking post on the right of the line, and wearing a peculiar uniform. In modern times, a member of a special regiment or corps; as, a grenadier of the guard of Napoleon I. one of the regiment of Grenadier Guards of the British army, etc.
The grenadier was the early version of today's "top gun" fighter pilots. The grenadier was equipped with grenades, also called "petards" -- he would run up to the enemy line, hurl his bomb, then run away as fast as he could..sometimes a grenadier didn't run fast enough, or get rid of the bomb in time, and so the phrase "to be lifted by one's own petard" came about, possibly. Reading the following, though, I get a slightly different image
:
petard Word History: The French used pétard, "a loud discharge of intestinal gas," for a kind of infernal engine for blasting through the gates of a city. "To be hoist by one's own petard," a now proverbial phrase apparently originating with Shakespeare's Hamlet (around 1604) not long after the word entered English (around 1598.), means "to blow oneself up with one's own bomb, be undone by one's own devices." The French noun pet, "fart," developed regularly from the Latin noun pditum, from the Indo-European root *pezd-, "fart."
...and this was years before Stern, mind you...
« Last Edit: Jul 12th, 2002, 9:53am by theTedLed »
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Originally posted by Bigwuss:
"Yeah, while we are on the topic of weird stuff, what the
heck is a Brigadier? I know what a Brigadier General is,
but have no idea what a Brigadier is.
I assume it is an old english term reffering to the
commander of a Brigade, Is that correct? "
------------------------------------------------
here's what I got from Dr. Dictionary for brigadier:
brigadier
general \Brig`a*dier" gen"er*al\ [F. brigadier, fr. brigade.] (Mil.) An officer in rank next above a colonel, and below a major general. He commands a brigade, and is sometimes called, by a shortening of his title, simply a brigadier.
Also of interest is the 'grenadier':
\Gren`a*dier"\, n. [F. grenadier. See Grenade.] 1. (Mil.) Originally, a soldier who carried and threw grenades; afterward, one of a company attached to each regiment or battalion, taking post on the right of the line, and wearing a peculiar uniform. In modern times, a member of a special regiment or corps; as, a grenadier of the guard of Napoleon I. one of the regiment of Grenadier Guards of the British army, etc.
The grenadier was the early version of today's "top gun" fighter pilots. The grenadier was equipped with grenades, also called "petards" -- he would run up to the enemy line, hurl his bomb, then run away as fast as he could..sometimes a grenadier didn't run fast enough, or get rid of the bomb in time, and so the phrase "to be lifted by one's own petard" came about, possibly. Reading the following, though, I get a slightly different image
petard Word History: The French used pétard, "a loud discharge of intestinal gas," for a kind of infernal engine for blasting through the gates of a city. "To be hoist by one's own petard," a now proverbial phrase apparently originating with Shakespeare's Hamlet (around 1604) not long after the word entered English (around 1598.), means "to blow oneself up with one's own bomb, be undone by one's own devices." The French noun pet, "fart," developed regularly from the Latin noun pditum, from the Indo-European root *pezd-, "fart."
...and this was years before Stern, mind you...
« Last Edit: Jul 12th, 2002, 9:53am by theTedLed »
