Word.ws English Dictionary

go pearshaped

go pearshaped is the alternative form of go pear-shaped.

Meaning of go pear-shaped

Verb

go pear-shaped (third-person singular simple present goes pear-shaped, present participle going pear-shaped, simple past went pear-shaped, past participle gone pear-shaped)

  1. (Commonwealth, Ireland, UK, especially, idiomatic, intransitive) To go awry; to go wrong.
    • After the third attack run I was letting back down to low level, passing through about 100 feet on the way down, when there were two bangs very close together. The whole aircraft shook and things went "pear-shaped" very quickly after that.1983, Jeffrey Ethell, Alfred Price, quoting Bob Iveson, “To Goose Green and Beyond, 26 May – 7 June”, in Air War: South Atlantic (The Air Combat Trilogy; 3), New York, N.Y.: Macmillan Publishing...

Forms of go pearshaped

third-person singular presentgoes pearshaped
present participlegoing pearshaped
pastwent pearshaped
past participlegone pearshaped

Questions about go pearshaped

What is go pearshaped the alternative form of?
Go pearshaped is the alternative form of go pear-shaped.

Words near go pearshaped in the dictionary

  1. go over to the majority
  2. go overboard
  3. go past
  4. go pear shaped
  5. go pear-shaped
  6. go pearshaped
  7. go pedal
  8. go pedals
  9. go Pete Tong
  10. go phut
  11. go pill

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: go pearshaped (page history and authors); go pear-shaped (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “go pearshaped.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/go_pearshaped. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.