Word.ws English Dictionary

played it pear-shaped

played it pear-shaped is the simple past and past participle of play it pear-shaped.

Meaning of play it pear-shaped

Verb

play it pear-shaped (third-person singular simple present plays it pear-shaped, present participle playing it pear-shaped, simple past and past participle played it pear-shaped)

  1. (dated, RAF slang) To avoid committing oneself to a single course of action; to go with the flow, take it easy.
    • I thought I'd play it pear-shaped with the Borough Engineer and asked him whose property it was anyway when it was in my garden — if the Council put it there enough times, it meant they were trying to get rid of it even though they didn't own it.1964, Densil Barr, “I Hate You Lamp-Post, You Know I Love You”, in Joseph F. McCrindle, editor, The Transatlantic Review, number 17, page 112

Questions about played it pear-shaped

What is played it pear-shaped the simple past and past participle of?
Played it pear-shaped is the simple past and past participle of play it pear-shaped.

Words near played it pear-shaped in the dictionary

  1. played into the hands of
  2. played it cheap
  3. played it close to the hip
  4. played it cool
  5. played it for all it's worth
  6. played it pear-shaped
  7. played it safe
  8. played it straight
  9. played like
  10. played merry havoc with
  11. played merry hell with

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: played it pear-shaped (page history and authors); play it 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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “played it pear-shaped.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/played_it_pear-shaped. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.