[Ads-l] "go pear-shaped"

[Laurence Horn]

Well, the OED sources (and commentary) do suggest a RAFfish origin, but do airplanes really go literally pear-shaped?  Any pictorial evidence of that?

LH

On Oct 26, 2014, at 4:12 PM, Neal Whitman wrote:

> I'm familiar with this as a BrE expression, and somewhere (maybe on Grant Barrett and Martha Barnett's "A Way with Words", or maybe in an talk or interview with David Crystal) I heard that it referred to the shape an aircraft might briefly make as it crashes into something.
> 
> Neal
> 
> On 10/26/2014 11:46 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
>> Subject:      Re: "go pear-shaped"
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> 
>> At 10/26/2014 07:19 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>> ... 'Go bad,' for some reason. (Not just figuratively "sag into into a pear
>>> shape," as one might imagine.)  ...
>> But I'm told it's healthier to go pear-shaped than to go
>> apple-shaped.  OED, s.v. "applie-shaped:
>> 
>> 1990   Sunday Herald Sun (Melbourne) (Nexis) 4 Feb.,   Women who are
>> 'apple-shaped' are at a significantly greater risk of developing
>> breast cancer than those who are 'pear-shaped', according to a new
>> study in the US.
>> 
>> Joel
>> 
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> 
> -- 
> Dr. Neal Whitman
> Lecturer, ESL Composition
> School of Teaching and Learning
> College of Education and Human Ecology
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