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Joined: Sep 2000
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stranger
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OP
stranger
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 1 |
I just started reading this board and saw that someone (johnjohn?) mentioned the phrase "It's all gone pear-shaped." I love the phrase and have been curious about its origins since hearing it a few years ago from a British friend. I have the amusing but probably incorrect notion that it stems some someone's observation of an overfilled plastic trashbag in the second before it splits open. Does anyone know the true origin?
To answer johnjohn's question, the phrase is not in common usage in the US. I've only heard it used by people from the UK and one Australian. Such a shame!
(If I've violated any posting etiquette, I'm open to instruction. I've read enough to know I'm risking an admonishment to "LIU," but I haven't been able to find anything yet. So I seek your wisdom. ;) )
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Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 347
enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 347 |
Hi Cee Dubb, and welcome from one stranger to another. Day 1 and posting #3 - I'm on a roll after weeks of being only a voyeur. I'm going out on a limb by not looking it up, and worse, I'm risking being politically incorrect, but.... I've always assumed its origin is to do with body shape - particularly of women. The perfect body shape, the marketers would have us believe, is the hour-glass. If your body is trending towards having more weight around the hips and bottom, you're "going pear-shaped", i.e. going in an undesirable direction, going to pieces, going to seed. I hasten to add that the sentiments expressed by the coiner (?) of the expression are not necessarily those of this writer.  [Insert some anxious hours here, awaiting retribution/rebuttal/excommunication/worse.]
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 167
member
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member
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 167 |
Marty - yep that sounds pretty plausible to me. At the risk of being un-PC myself, I'd say that often non-PC expressions and similes are the most vivid and hence effective! See you later at the auto-da-fe! :0)
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542 |
well, if you're fearful that someone will take offense should you call them pear-shaped, we have pyriform...
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
First, welcome Cee Dubb and Marty--good to have you! if you're fearful that someone will take offense should you call them pear-shaped, we have pyriform...tsuwm, you are certainly giving 'equal opportunity' with this one! 
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,981
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,981 |
It can't be all that non-pc. Marks and Spencers have a big board in the female changing room advising on the clothes that people should wear according to their shape. Apples and pears feature in the list with appropriate remedies.
Myself, I'm longing to look like a twig. Funny how we're never happy with what we have!
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Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 2,204
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 2,204 |
Without having any real idea of the origins of the phrase (which I agree is remarkably apposite in most of the situations where I've come across it) and disregarding anyone who says, "What's new?" I have always understood it to mean that events had become so erratic that there shape was no longer perfect. Perfect is often - usually? - epitomised by the circle: "The perfect circle," which, in turn, can be equated to apple shapes. Pear shaped, therefore, could mean that the apple-like perfection has been lost. Mind you, personally, I tend to the view that all the best things come in pears.
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Joined: Apr 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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better pyriform than napiform...
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
better pyriform than napiform...
Quite a pear, tsuwm! But what's wrong with the shape of a turnip? Did you turnip something sinister in this? It
appears that you are biased toward the fruit.
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542 |
it's simply a matter of taste, he said insipidly.
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