I know this is GQ, so if you’re going to be offended by an etomological opinion, skip on ahead,
I think the reason the phrase seems to make no sense is due to it’s blatant misogyny and dig at matrimony. It’s an elephant in the room sort of phrase, no can bear to face what it really refers to.
“She was lively, lithe lass, when I married her, now she’s…”
Not sure the origin but it’s a very common phrase here in Australia.
The Thin Blue Line, the Rowan Atkison series from 1995-96 was the first time I heard it used on film. It was used several times and was never explained in any way - so I assume it was familiar enough to BBC viewers by the mid-90’s to need no explanation.
FWIW the character who routinely used it was a military wanna-be - sorta of like Frank Burns of MASH
I have no cites to back this up, but I’d always thought it was what happened when you lost control of the clay on the potter’s wheel. Whatever you meant the clay to do, when your concentration slipped it all went “pear-shaped.”
I cant remember when I first heard it, it might have been around my whole life (I’m 40). Its been part of my own vocabulary for at least 10 years and I hear it often.
At least in Australian usage its not commonly used to describe someone’s figure but I suspect the Sonoran Lizard King is likely right about the origin. Things go pear-shaped when they go off the rails or get all fucked up. People talk about office romances and talk of how awkward the office will be if it goes pear-shaped. If you’re working flat chat on a project and it gets stuffed up someone will likely say it went all pear-shaped. When my girlfriend moved in with me she kept her own apartment at first just in case we couldn’t live together and things went pear-shaped. My boss would ask for fall-back positions “what if it goes pear-shaped?”.
The reason it was so overused on TBL was because it was overused on “The Bill”, as the Wiki artice suggests. The Bill was a serious cop show of the late 80s onwards, and was the source most of TBLs “pear shaped” references, particularly the notion that Metropolitan Police overuse the term. Basically anyone using the term on TBL was doing so as a parody of The Bill.
I remember reading some armchair etymology — I forget where — that a drop of water goes pear-shaped right before it’s about to fall, as from a faucet.
That is exactly what I had assumed, as well.
I’m skeptical of that one, mainly because I don’t think that really is a particularly apt description of what happens when a potter loses control.
I could imagine it being a description of what happens if you make your pot from clay that is too wet and soft, then set it to dry, and it sags, but imagination is cheap, and sagging out of shape could happen in any number of artistic and technical disciplines.