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apple-pie

American  
[ap-uhl-pahy] / ˈæp əlˌpaɪ /

adjective

  1. pertaining to or embodying values perceived as traditionally American, or, more broadly, as unassailable.

    apple-pie virtues of individualism and hard work;

    an apple-pie issue that no politician could vote against.

Etymology

Origin of apple-pie

First recorded in 1960–70

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

It could have raised funds it needed elsewhere, through traditional, home-spun, apple-pie American institutions like private equity behemoths.

From Slate • Jul. 12, 2023

He’s a pleasingly inoffensive, nonthreateningly masculine, apple-pie type, but like so many all-American commodities, there’s more lurking in that designation.

From New York Times • Jul. 27, 2021

He wasn’t into the whole all-American, apple-pie look.

From Fox News • Jan. 6, 2020

Patriotism and apple-pie nostalgia, other Super Bowl ad staples, were also scant.

From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 4, 2019

He was carrying the fighting harness, which was strapped up in apple-pie order according to his own dodges and wrinkles—for, from now on, he was Lancelot’s squire.

From "The Once and Future King" by T. H. White

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.