Open-arse

Pronunciation

• UK IPA: /ˈəʊpÉ™nɑːs/

Origin

Old English openærs, corresponding to open + arse (‘with allusion to the large cavity at the end of the fruit between the persistent calyx lobes’ – OED3).

Full definition of open-arse

Noun

1. (UK regional) The medlar fruit. from 10th c.
• c. 1390, Geoffrey Chaucer, ‘Reeve's Prologue’, Canterbury Tales (Ellesmere manuscript):But if I fare as dooth an Openers
  That ilke fruyt is euer leng the wers
  Til it be roten in Mullok or in stree ....
• 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’.