Pear-shaped  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Les Poires, as sold separately to cover the expenses of a trial of Le Charivari, after a version published in Le Charivari of January 17, 1834. The drawing was made by Daumier after the sketch of Philipon.

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Pear-shaped is a metaphorical term with several meanings, all in reference to the shape of a (European) pear, i.e. tapering towards the top (botanically this is the bottom, the stem end) and rounded at the bottom (botanically this is the apex).

The comparison is less literal when the term is applied to people, where it means narrow at the shoulders and wide at the hips, a use that goes back to at least 1815, and one that can have either positive connotations (as in Venus figurines) or negative, depending upon the context.

In the 20th century, another, more abstract use of the term evolved. When said of someone's voice, "pear-shaped" means rich and sonorous. The OED dates this use to 1925.

The third meaning is mostly limited to the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australasia. It describes a situation that went awry, perhaps horribly wrong. A failed bank robbery, for example, could be said to have "gone pear-shaped". Less well known in the US it generated some media interest when British politician Margaret Thatcher used the phrase in front of the world's press at one of her first meetings with U.S. President Ronald Reagan, with many reporters being unsure of the meaning of the term. The origin for this use of the term is in dispute. The OED cites its origin as within the Royal Air Force; as of 2003 the earliest citation there is a quote in the 1983 book Air War South Atlantic. Others date it to the RAF in the 1940s, from pilots attempting to perform aerial manoeuvres such as loops. These are difficult to form perfectly, and are usually noticeably distorted—i.e., pear-shaped.

Other theories include:

• If the original plan was to be visualised as a perfect circle, then the failed execution might be pictured as a distorted figure, hence "pear-shaped".
• When a gun barrel fails, it exhibits a characteristic swelling at the point of failure, usually due to a bullet hitting an obstruction in the barrel or the barrel material failing due to excessive chamber pressure.
• In pottery, when a bowl, or whatever is being turned, ends up rather less circular than one would like.
• Round party balloons suggest celebration and success, but as they deflate they take on a pear shape.
• Some aircraft engines become distorted (pear-shaped) in the event of failure.
• Early biplane aircraft buckled into a pear-shape when they crashed, especially stalling on take-off.
• The phrase refers to the shape of a gas balloon when it loses pressure. Gas balloons are spherical due to aerostatic pressure, but when they leak the gas rises to the top of the balloon and the neck bunches up, causing the balloon to look like an upside-down pear. The phrase hails from Victorian Britain when gas balloons first became popular.
• In glass blowing it describes a failed circular blown vessel. If overheated, the glass becomes too fluid and distorts under gravity as it cools, resulting in a pear-shaped vessel. This was particularly important with early experiments with cathode ray tubes, where creating a large spherical glass vessel was necessary. Blowing such an object was a challenge and often 'went pear-shaped'.
• It may be a mechanical engineering term: White metal bearings (large stationary engines and the like) when worn become "pear shaped" sometimes, due to wear and tear. It was also used to indicate poor workmanship in the manufacturing.
• The physics package of certain compact thermonuclear weapons such as the W-88 (reference cross-sectional diagram) is, reportedly, pear-shaped, with a spherical secondary and an oblate primary.