go pear-shaped
verbEtymology
Uncertain; the following etymologies have been suggested: * From the image of a solid rectangle “slipping down” into a pear shape, thus “the bottom drops out”. ** 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. * From the image of a balloon or football losing its spherical shape after being punctured. * 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. Apparently the term was originally Royal Air Force slang, but came into common use by the 1990s.
Definitions
To go awry
To go awry; to go wrong.
- 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.
- Now the whole world economy seems to be going pear-shaped all at once[…].
- 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.
The neighborhood
Vish — recursive loop
No curated loop yet for go pear-shaped. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.
sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA