pear-shaped

[Prof. R. Sussex]

Every week I do radio broadcasts on language for the Australian
Broadcasting Corporation, and we have had some lively talkback on
"pear-shaped".

Michael Quinion
        http://www.quinion.com/words/qa/qa-pea2.htm
thinks it might come from faulty loops by the Royal Air Force. A
listener to my program says that it was used in the UK at least by
the fifties, when red-hot rivets were thrown up to the riveters for
inserting into ships' plates. If the rivets cooled they would not
pass through the holes, and bulged when hit with a hammer, so
becoming pear-shaped. This is the earliest date that we have been
able to determine with some confidence.

The phrase is used regularly in British colloquial language, e.g. in
police series like "The Bill".

Roly Sussex

--
**********************************************************

Roly Sussex
Professor of Applied Language Studies
Department of French, German, Russian, Spanish and Applied Linguistics
School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies
The University of Queensland
Brisbane
Queensland 4072
AUSTRALIA

Office: Forgan-Smith Tower 403
Phone:  +61 7 3365 6896
Fax:    +61 7 3365 2798
Email:  sussex at uq.edu.au
Web:    http://www.arts.uq.edu.au/slccs/profiles/sussex.html
School's website:
        http://www.arts.uq.edu.au/slccs/

Language Talkback ABC radio:
Web:    http://www.cltr.uq.edu.au/languagetalkback/
Audio:  from http://www.abc.net.au/darwin/


**********************************************************