Word.ws English Dictionary

playing it pear-shaped

playing it pear-shaped is the present participle and gerund 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 playing it pear-shaped

What is playing it pear-shaped the present participle and gerund of?
Playing it pear-shaped is the present participle and gerund of play it pear-shaped.

Words near playing it pear-shaped in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: playing 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.

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