apples (and pears) n.
1. (also apple and pears) stairs [apple and pears variant is mid-19C only].
![]() | Vulgar Tongue. | |
![]() | Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. 141: APPLE AND PEARS, stairs. | |
, , | ![]() | Sl. Dict. |
![]() | Breckenridge News (Cloveport, KY) 23 Aug. 3/3: We lived up ‘apples and pears’. | |
![]() | Sporting Times 29 Nov. 1/1: He [...] dragged me down the apples and pears by my Barnet Fair, and put me on the Hannah Maria. | |
![]() | Sporting Times 29 Oct. n.p.: The clock on the apples and pears / Gave the office for us to clear. | ‘The Rhyme of the Rusher’|
![]() | Sporting Times 13 Mar. n.p.: He’d divested himself of his daisies below, / And had crawled up the apples and pears. | ‘Daylight Saving’|
![]() | Sinister Street II 1100: I soon shoved him down the Apples-and-pears. | |
![]() | N&Q 12 Ser. IX 345: Apples-and-Pears. Stairs. | |
![]() | Eve. Herald (Dublin) 24 Nov. 6/4: The East End tongue is rich in quaint idioms and rhymed slang. [...] The ‘apples and pairs’ [sic] are meant to indicate stairs. | |
![]() | This Gutter Life 159: Where ’e’s a-goin’ teh, they ’ave teh go dahn two flights er apples an’ pears. | |
![]() | Swag, the Spy and the Soldier in Lehmann Penguin New Writing No. 26 38: Sandy climbed the apples and pears to bed. | |
![]() | AS XXI:1 Feb. 47: peaches and pears. The stairs. (Origin uncertain, but probably English.) More probably American with its reference to peaches. | ‘Some Notes on Rhyming Argot’ in|
![]() | Bitten by the Tarantula (2005) 202: Now Bogart climbs the apples to his apartment. | ‘The Dark Diceman’|
![]() | Cockney 293: A Cockney woman, unless on very friendly terms that admit of jocularity will not say she is going up the apples and pears. | |
![]() | ‘Screwsman’s Lament’ in Encounter n.d. in Norman’s London (1969) 68: Drummer takes a butchers, and sees it ain’t alive / Then we whip it down the apples and cart it down the drive. | |
![]() | Teachers (1962) 71: Wasn’t on the apples-and-pears, ain’t got there yet, so up you. | |
![]() | (con. 1950-1960) Dict. Inmate Sl. (Walla Walla, WA) 3: Apples ’n pears – stairs. | |
![]() | Crust on its Uppers 60: Marchmare and I dived for the apples. | |
![]() | More Aus. Nicknames 22: No one these days climbs the apples and pears, they climb the apples. | |
![]() | Ridgey-Didge Oz Jack Lang 17: Apples and Pears Stairs. | |
![]() | in Little Legs 192: apples stairs (abb. for apples and pears in rhyming slang). | |
![]() | Observer Travel 3 Oct. 3: Pearly royals gather on the apples and pears of the church. | |
![]() | Guardian G2 17 Feb. 3: ’Ere ’e comes up the Apples and Pears. |
2. (UK Und.) in fig. use, an appearance in court [the stairs here are those leading from the cells to the dock in an Old Bailey court].
![]() | Inside the Und. 163: Muck up the family name with another apples and pears at the Old Bailey. |