poperin pear, n. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

poperin pear n.

also poperine pear, poplin pear

[Poperinghe, in west Flanders. The word comes in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (1594), that repository of so much innuendo. ‘O, that she were / An open et-caetera / Thou a poperin pear!’ says Mercutio to Romeo. Partridge, in Shakespeare’s Bawdy (1947), suggests a pun on ‘pop her in’; Nares, Glossary (1822), complains that ‘it seems that there is much attempt at wit on this pear, in some old dramas; but such as it is not worthwhile to repeat, or attempt explaining’]

1. the penis.

1595		Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet II i: O, that she were / An open et-caetera, thou a poperin pear!
c.1625		Rowley Woman never Vext 38: I requested him to pull me A Catherine Peare, and had not I lookt to him He would have mistooke and given me a Popperin.
1661		Mennis & Smith et al. ‘A Song’ in Wit and Drollery 103: Ladies here I do present you / With a dainty dish of fruit, / The first it was a Poplin Pear [...] You need not pare it any whit / But put it all in at a bit.
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.
1896		Farmer Vocabula Amatoria (1966) 113: Étendard, m. The penis; ‘the poperine pear’.

2. a piece of excrement.

1655

Mercurius Fumigosus 60 11-18 July 7: The Wench, (hearing his description of her) dropt from a hole, on the backside of her Breeches a Popperin Peare that beat the Spectacles from his Nose, and followed it with such a salt shower.