open-arse
Appearance
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]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
[edit]Noun
[edit]open-arse (plural open-arses)
- (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, published 2002, page 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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- en:Fruits
- en:Pome fruits