turn pear-shaped
English edit
Verb edit
turn pear-shaped (third-person singular simple present turns pear-shaped, present participle turning pear-shaped, simple past and past participle turned pear-shaped)
- Synonym of go pear-shaped (“to go awry; to go wrong”).
- 2006 January 25, Bernard Hare, “A life in brown and white”, in The Guardian[1], archived from the original on 2014-09-21:
- With the heater going full blast, Sophie and I drive to the all-night garage, and for the price of a coffee I get her life story. Happy as a child, things turned pear-shaped as she entered her teens.
- 2016 May 28, Andrea Beattie, quoting Stuart Taylor, “What Small Business Can Teach The Big End Of Town About Disruption”, in HuffPost[2], archived from the original on 2023-01-08:
- Unfortunately, a lot of the work we do is around trying to encourage leaders and staff in larger organisations to move away from a fear-based culture and one that is driven by 'I don't want to speak up in case I say the wrong thing' or 'what if I experiment with a new offering and it turns pear-shaped and I don't make my numbers?
- 2017 October 12, Donna Spencer, quoting Brent McMahon, “Canadian triathletes tackle world Ironman championship”, in CBC News[3], archived from the original on 2018-12-29:
- He took a five-minute penalty for drafting on the bike and, while attempting to run his way back into the lead group, his stomach rebelled and he lost minutes and energy vomiting at the side of the road. "Things turned pear-shaped real quick there," the 37-year-old recalled.
- For more quotations using this term, see Citations:turn pear-shaped.
References edit
- “turn pear-shaped”, in OED Online
, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.
