Wayne in Sherman, Texas, wonders how the term pear-shaped came to describe something that’s gone badly. The expression seems to have arisen during Falklands War of the early 1980s. If you need a word for pear-shaped, there’s always pyriform, from the Latin word for pear, pirum. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Go Pear-Shaped Origins”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Wayne Meyer from Austin College in Sherman, Texas.
Hey there, Wayne. What’s up?
Hi, Wayne.
I have an odd phrase that I just can’t figure out where it comes from. I’ve heard it lots of times on British TV shows. I have some British friends who use it occasionally. Whenever something goes wrong, it’s going against the plan, they say things have gone pear-shaped. I’ve never thought of a pear as a disastrous fruit, so I’m really wondering where that came from.
I think of pumpkins.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, pears are kind of nice, right?
Mm—
So the truth is that it has kind of a grisly origin. It has to do with pilots in the Falklands War, or the War of Las Malvinas, if you’re in Argentina. And Royal Air Force pilots from Britain would talk about, you know, flying along and then maybe getting shot out of the sky and crashing. And think of that death spiral and the plane going down and smashing into the ground, and it goes pear-shaped. You know, you’ve got a bigger bottom, and then it sort of tapers up to the top. The bigger bottom where it collided with the earth, right?
Yeah, yeah, in the shape of a pear.
Wow, that’s a little grizzly.
Isn’t it?
Yeah.
Yeah, so I’m very interested that it’s your British friends who usually use it, although it’s made its way into pop culture. Politics in the United States and engineering and the military here, it’s very common. Like it shows up what early 80s and that’s when the Falkland Islands War was and then quickly gets popular across the world in English-speaking countries.
Yeah, it’s kind of this, you know, gallows humor.
Yeah.
Right, yeah.
So it’s all about something that used to have a good shape now being bigger on the bottom because it collided with the earth or it fell down.
Well, thank you very much. That’s fascinating.
Kind of a surprise, right?
Yeah.
All right.
Thanks, Wayne. Really appreciate the call.
Oh, thank you very much. Take care.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
On a more positive note, there is a more formal word for pear-shaped, right? Something that’s pear-shaped is…
Oh, piriform.
Piriform.
And a P-Y-R is…
Am I remembering this? It’s connected to the word that we get pear from?
Yes.
Yes.
It would go back to the Latin word, I think.
To Latin.
That’s cool. I love it that we have this modern word. You can go to the store and buy a pear. And the word for pear goes back thousands of years through several languages. Still kind of is still pair.
Yes.
And in other languages too. It’s para in Spanish.
Yeah.
Email words@waywordradio.org.
