open-arse

open-arse

English

Etymology

From Middle English open-ers, from Old English openears, corresponding to open + arse, ‘with allusion to the large cavity at the end of the fruit between the persistent calyx lobes’ – OED3.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈəʊpənɑːs/

Noun

open-arse (plural open-arses)

1. (UK regional) The medlar fruit. [from 10th c.]
   • 1837, John Bellenden Kerr, An Essay on the Archaeology of our Popular Phrases and Nursery Rhymes, vol II.1:

     In several of our counties the same fruit is called an open arse; another of those unluckily belotted travesties of a very properly-expressed original phrase [...].

   • 1968, Eric Partridge, Shakespeare's Bawdy, Routledge 2002, p. 129:

     On a second reading, prompted by the reproaches of several friends and scholars, I conclude that the pun on medlar, slangily known as ‘an open-arse’, and poperin pear, shape-resembling penis and scrotum, is so forcibly obvious that ‘an open et-caetera’ must here mean ‘an open arse’.

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