Dictionary

open-arse en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• /ˈəʊpənɑːs/ (UK)

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.

Meanings

1. (UK, regional) The medlar fruit.
   • 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’. 1968, Eric Partridge, Shakespeare's Bawdy, Routledge, published 2002, page 129:
   • 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 [...]. 1837, John Bellenden Kerr, An Essay on the Archaeology of our Popular Phrases and Nursery Rhymes, vol II.1:

Forms