Meaning of Idiom ‘Apple Pie Order’
Something that is in apple-pie order is neat, tidy, and well organized.
This idiom usually refers to how a person keeps their home but is also associated with the military, especially navy ships.
Sentence Examples
“My mother always keeps her house in apple-pie order. She can’t stand things being out of place or messy.”
“For an old-time hardware store, old John’s is in apple-pie order. Everything is so organized and easy to find.”
“It’s important for a dentist’s tools to be in apple-pie order.”
“Ask Eric to neaten up all these shelves. He’s the only one who knows how to get this stuff in apple-pie order.”
Origin of Apple Pie Order
There are at least four competing explanations for the origin of this idiom.
One obvious explanation, relying heavily on folk etymology, is that it has to do with the making of apple pie. According to this claim, it is an allusion to how early American housewives would make their apple pies in a very meticulous way, often by placing the thin slices of apples in a very fancy and precise geometrical pattern so that every piece was placed perfectly.
Since this would seem to be a lot of trouble to go through when the apples were going to be covered by a sheet of dough and nobody would be able to see or appreciate this neat arrangement, another theory says that the idiom relates to how housewives would place pies to cool on shelves in a very neat and precise row.
Regardless, the idiom is British in origin rather than American, so references to American housewives are sure to be incorrect. The idiom appears in print as early as 1780, journals of a British sailor named Thomas Pasley. He wrote that the sailors were ‘clean and in apple-pie order’ on Sundays.’
Sir Walter Scott wrote in a letter published in the memoirs of Sir Walter Scott by John Lockhart in 1839, saying ‘the children’s garden is in apple-pie order.’
Two other theories have to do with French terms.
The first is that apple-pie order is a corruption of the French term nappe-pliée, which referred to neatly folded linen such as napkins or sheets. According to this theory, nappe-pliée became a nappe pliee which became an appe pliee which finally became an apple pie. Proponents of the theory make no effort to explain how “order” came to be a part of the phrase and no real evidence exists for these intermediate steps.
The next theory concerns the French term cap-à-pie, meaning “head to foot.” In Shakespeare’s in Hamlet, Horatio describes the ghost of Hamlet’s father, who was outfitted in full armor, as armed cap-à-pie. Since military armor is orderly and detail-oriented, it is suggested that cap-a-pie somehow became apple-pie order, in English, but, of course, no evidence exists for any intermediate forms, just as above.
Other suggestions are no more credible. One is that the phrase comes from alpha beta, meaning as orderly as the letters of the alphabet.
It has even been suggested that it came from the old alphabet rhyme where ‘A is for apple,’ in which all the letters of the alphabet are in apple-pie order.
There is no real evidence to back up any of these explanations, and they all seem a bit fanciful. To date, we do not really know the origin of this idiom.
