subs. phr. (colloquial).—The perfection of neatness and exactness.

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  1813.  SCOTT [LOCKHART, Life, IV. (1839), 131. The children’s garden is in APPLE PIE ORDER.

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  1834.  MARRYAT, Jacob Faithful, viii. 29. Put the craft a little into APPLE PIE ORDER.

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  1837.  R. H. BARHAM, The Ingoldsby Legends, ‘The Lay of the Old Woman Clothed 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.

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