常時英心:言葉の森から 1.0

約10年間,はてなダイアリーで英語表現の落穂拾いを行ってきました。現在はAmeba Blogに2.0を開設し,継続中です。こちらはしばらくアーカイブとして維持します。

go pear-shaped 復習

 Amber Rudd could clearly picture the briefing document that had been left on her desk in February. Perhaps she ought to have taken a quick peek at it after all. But back then the home secretary hadn’t been entirely sure she had the necessary clearance to read something stamped “official – sensitive” and she had been awfully busy working on other things. So she had just left it in the pile marked “embarrassing documents to be leaked to the Guardian”. …
 Instead it had all gone pear-shaped long before the start. Only the previous day she had gone on TV to assert that the 14% fall in police numbers since 2010 was entirely coincidental, but now it had emerged that the policy wonks in her own department had come to precisely the opposite conclusion. Somehow she was going to have to try and muddle her way through. (Skip the rest)

https://www.google.co.jp/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2018/apr/09/amber-rudd-commits-a-serious-of-gross-incompetence

 今回取り上げる表現は、go pear-shaped です。直訳をすれば「洋ナシの形をした」となりますが、今回の文脈には合いません。では、どのような意味をもつのか、以下で確認していきます。 
 まず Cambridge Dictionary でみると、“If a plan goes pear-shaped, it fails” とありました。また、LDOCE には “British English informal” “if an activity or situation goes pear-shaped, it goes wrong” と定義されていました。物事が上手くいかないことを表すことがわかります。記事にあるように It all goes pear-shaped と all と使われることが多いようです。
 次に語源を調べてみると、Wiktionary に “(1990s) From the image of a solid rectangle 'slipping down' into a pear shape, thus 'the bottom drops out'. ― Jonathon Green, Cassell's Dictionary of Slang, second edition, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2005” とありました。語源は諸説あり、これは一例になります。
 以上のことから go pear-shaped は「洋ナシ型の、上手くいかない」という意味であることがわかりました。(OkaUchi)