subs. phr. (old).—1.  A medlar.

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  1383.  CHAUCER, Prologue to Reeve’s Tale, i. 17.

        But-if I fare as dooth an OPEN-ERS;
That ilke fruit is ever leng the wers,
Til it be roten in mullok or in stree.

2

  1530.  PALSGRAVE, Langue Francoyse, s.v. OPYNARS.

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  1595.  SHAKESPEARE, Romeo and Juliet, ii. 1.

        Now will he sit under a medlar-tree,
And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit,
As maids call medlars, when they laugh alone—
Oh, Romeo! that she were, O! that she were
An OPEN-ARSE.

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  1598.  FLORIO, A Worlde of Wordes, s.v. Nespola, the fruit we call a Meddler or an OPEN-ARSE.

5

  c. 1696.  B. E., A New Dictionary of the Canting Crew, s.v.

6

  1785.  GROSE, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, s.v. MEDLAR. A fruit vulgarly called an OPEN-A—E, of which it is more truly than delicately said, that it is never ripe till it is rotten as a t—d, and then it is not worth a f—t.

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  2.  (old).—A wench: see BARRACK-HACK and TART.—B. E. (c. 1696).

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