Page:Farmer - Slang and its analogues past and present - Volume 1.pdf/79

 up, so as to prevent a person from stretching out at full length, and filling the bag thus formed with brushes, soap-dishes, etc. So called, either from the apple-turnover, in which the 'paste' is turned over the apples, or from the French, à plis, folded.

1811. C. K. Sharpe, in Correspondence (1888), i., 466. After squeezing myself up, and making a sort of apple-pye bed with the beginning of my sheet.

1883. Saturday Review, Nov. 3, p. 566, col. 2. Some 'evil-disposed persons' have already visited his room, made his bed into an apple-pie, plentifully strewn with hair-brushes and razors.

The French have an analogous phrase, 'mettre un lit en portefeuille.'

Apple-Pie day, subs. phr. (Winchester Coll.)--The day on which Six-and-Six (q.v.) is played. It is the Thursday after the first Tuesday in December. So called because hot apple-pies were served on gomers (q.v.) in College for dinner.

Apple Pie Order, subs. phr. (familiar).--Exact or perfect order. Etymolygists have long puzzled themselves concerning this expression, and many derivations have been put forward in explanation. Some have found in it an allusion to the regular order in which the component parts of some varieties of that toothsome delicacy, apple pie, were formerly laid one on the top of, or side by side with each other. Others, on the contrary, scout such a homely origin, and suggest that apple pie order is cap à pied order. The authorities who incline to this view point out that cap à pied in the sense of 'perfectly appointed' occurs in one of the scenes of Hamlet. Though orthographically the transition from one to the other, at first sight, would appear to be somewhat lame and halting, yet phonetically the difference is much less marked. It has further been suggested that apple pie order is a corruption of 'Alpha-beta' i.e., alphabetical order, but this would seem rather far-fetched, as also is the reference of it to the nursery rhyme of 'A was an apple pie; B bit it; C cut it; D divided it,' and so on, the allusion being to the regular order in which the letters of the alphabet occur. Probably the weight of evidence is on the side of the derivation from cap à pied, more especially as that phrase was once very familiar.

1813. Scott in Lochart, Life, IV. (1839), 131. The children's garden is in apple pie order.

1835. Marryat, Jacob Faithful, viii., 29. Put the craft a little into apple pie order.

1837. Barham, I. L. (Old Woman in Grey).

I am just in the order which some folks--though why, I am sure I can't tell you--would call apple pie.

Apples. How we apples swim! phr. (common).--i.e., 'What a good time we are having.' This expression, a very old one, is synonymous with pleasureable experience coupled with brisk action.

1697-1764. Hogarth (Works by J. Ireland and J. Nichols, London, 1873), III., p. 29. And even this, little as it is, gives him so much importance in his own eyes, that he assumes a consequen-*