See go pear-shaped on Wiktionary
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"etymology_text": "Uncertain; the following etymologies have been suggested:\n* From the image of a solid rectangle “slipping down” into a pear shape, thus “the bottom drops out”.\n** Similar thoughts about the work of either glassblowers or potters involve a theme of the work trending toward a sagging shape; such speculations may be only folk etymology.\n* From the image of a balloon or football losing its spherical shape after being punctured.Tony Thorne (2014) “pear-shaped, adj.”, in Dictionary of Contemporary Slang, 4th edition, London: Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN, pages 327–328.\n* From an idea that people who shoulder the work — who have the responsibility on their shoulders — may descend into shirking, in which case their broad shoulders diminish as their body becomes pear-shaped.\nApparently the term was originally Royal Air Force slang, but came into common use by the 1990s.",
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"ref": "1983, Jeffrey Ethell, Alfred Price, quoting Bob Iveson, “To Goose Green and Beyond, 26 May – 7 June”, in Air War: South Atlantic (The Air Combat Trilogy; 3), New York, N.Y.: Macmillan Publishing Company, →ISBN, pages 158–159:",
"text": "After the third attack run I was letting back down to low level, passing through about 100 feet on the way down, when there were two bangs very close together. The whole aircraft shook and things went \"pear-shaped\" very quickly after that.",
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"text": "Now the whole world economy seems to be going pear-shaped all at once[…].",
"type": "quote"
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{
"ref": "1993 October 16, Sally Vincent, “Lost boys”, in Peter Preston, editor, The Guardian Weekend, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 8, column 1:",
"text": "Patsy dwells on this, as though on the last ordinarily weird thing she ever experienced, the last moment of sanity before it all went pear-shaped.",
"type": "quote"
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"ref": "1998, Michael Armstrong, quoting Tina Mason, “Team Building”, in Managing People: A Practical Guide for Line Managers, London: Kogan Page, published 2001, →ISBN, part 2 (Managing People – the Basic Skills), page 39:",
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"ref": "2002 March 25, “Stay Positive”, in Mike Skinner (lyrics), Original Pirate Material, performed by The Streets:",
"text": "I hope you understand me / I ain't no preaching fucker and I ain't no do-goody-goody either / This is about when shit goes pear-shaped",
"type": "quote"
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"ref": "2008, Nicholas Bate, “What to Do if It Goes Awry”, in Have It Your Way: 52 Brilliant Ideas for Getting Everything You Want, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Infinite Ideas Company, →ISBN, page 38:",
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"text": "[Gordon] Strachan was an experienced Scottish international who, under Alex Ferguson, had won European honours with Aberdeen and an FA Cup with Manchester United, but his relationship with his former mentor had gone pear-shaped.",
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"text": "There are a few cases that need to be covered, as they fall under the general umbrella of \"what grids do when things go pear-shaped.\"",
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"type": "quote"
},
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"type": "quote"
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"text": "[Gordon] Strachan was an experienced Scottish international who, under Alex Ferguson, had won European honours with Aberdeen and an FA Cup with Manchester United, but his relationship with his former mentor had gone pear-shaped.",
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"text": "They call for the economics syllabus to be rewritten to reflect the chasm between the confident mechanistic models they are still taught and the real economy which went pear-shaped.",
"type": "quote"
},
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"code": "fi",
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"sense": "to go awry or wrong",
"word": "mennä mönkään"
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{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "to go awry or wrong",
"word": "mennä päin mäntyä"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "to go awry or wrong",
"word": "mennä pieleen"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "to go awry or wrong",
"word": "aller à vau-l’eau"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "to go awry or wrong",
"word": "partir à la dérive"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "to go awry or wrong",
"word": "partir à vau-l’eau"
},
{
"code": "fr",
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"sense": "to go awry or wrong",
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"word": "partir en couille"
},
{
"code": "fr",
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"sense": "to go awry or wrong",
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],
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},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "to go awry or wrong",
"tags": [
"informal"
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"word": "partir en vrille"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "to go awry or wrong",
"word": "schieflaufen"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "to go awry or wrong",
"word": "danebengehen"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"sense": "to go awry or wrong",
"word": "schiefgehen"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "idti naperekosjak",
"sense": "to go awry or wrong",
"word": "идти наперекосяк"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "vsjo idjót naperekosjak",
"sense": "to go awry or wrong",
"word": "всё идёт наперекосяк"
},
{
"code": "es",
"lang": "Spanish",
"sense": "to go awry or wrong",
"word": "irse al tacho"
},
{
"code": "sv",
"lang": "Swedish",
"sense": "to go awry or wrong",
"word": "gå åt pipan"
},
{
"code": "sv",
"lang": "Swedish",
"sense": "to go awry or wrong",
"word": "skita sig"
}
],
"word": "go pear-shaped"
}
Download raw JSONL data for go pear-shaped meaning in All languages combined (9.0kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-21 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (d8cb2f3 and 4e554ae). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.