lay-overs for meddlers

Dictionary of American Words And Phrases by John Russell Bartlett.

A reply to a troublesome question on the part of a child, in answer to 'What's that?.' A turn-over is a little pie made of one round cake of dough, doubled and joined at the edges, in which stewed apples are inclosed. Similar cakes were sold in England; and Grose suggests that they may also have been filled with medlars, a fruit resembling the apple; and that hence may have arisen the reply. The expression is noticed in Moor's Suffolk Glossary. I have never heard it except in New York.

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