pear [OE] A word adopted before the Anglo-Saxons arrived in England from the Latin pirum. The expression go pear-shaped, ‘to go wrong’, is from RAF slang. Although the first written examples are from the early 1980s, around the time of the Falklands War, it was probably in use several decades earlier. Some sources suggest that it may have arisen as a darkly humorous reference to the shape of a fighter plane after it has nose-dived and crashed into the ground. A more cheerful alternative theory is that it describes a novice pilot’s less than successful attempts to produce a perfect circle when performing a loop in the air. Perry [ME], the drink made from pear juice, goes back to the same root via French.