Go pear-shaped

After the third attack run I was letting back down to low level, passing through about 100 feet on the way down, when there were two bangs very close together. The whole aircraft shook and things went "pear-shaped" very quickly after that.

Now the whole world economy seems to be going pear-shaped all at once[…].

Patsy dwells on this, as though on the last ordinarily weird thing she ever experienced, the last moment of sanity before it all went pear-shaped.

If you are asking people to make decisions, then it's very important that you support them when things go wrong, otherwise they'll never make one again … when things go pear-shaped, and occasionally they do, we try to treat it as a learning experience.

I hope you understand me / I ain't no preaching fucker and I ain't no do-goody-goody either / This is about when shit goes pear-shaped

Once you've acknowledged that things have gone pear-shaped, you need to re-take control and move on.

[Gordon] Strachan was an experienced Scottish international who, under Alex Ferguson, had won European honours with Aberdeen and an FA Cup with Manchester United, but his relationship with his former mentor had gone pear-shaped.

They call for the economics syllabus to be rewritten to reflect the chasm between the confident mechanistic models they are still taught and the real economy which went pear-shaped.

There are a few cases that need to be covered, as they fall under the general umbrella of "what grids do when things go pear-shaped."