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...
You might use the phrase pear-shaped to describe someone who’s wide in the hips, but to say everything went pear-shaped can also mean that things went wrong. This slang term was among the members of Britain’s Royal Air Force during the Falkland...
shmoo n.— «Yeast cells don’t have casual sex. Preparations are involved. In particular, the cell must reshape itself, becoming elongated like a microscopic pear. Scientists have a name for a cell in such a state: “shmoo.” The word was coined in...
loot in the boot n.— «My shape is that of a slightly distorted heavy pear: slender, Chabella-like shoulders and a gently rising collarbone cast lines that soften and swell past a high waist to what Amy and I refer to as “loot in the boot”—hips that...