Saws sharpened accurately to begin with by Yankee in outskirts of Gallipolis (7)
I believe the answer is:
sayings
'saws' is the definition.
(I've seen this in another clue)
'sharpened accurately to begin with by yankee in outskirts of gallipolis' is the wordplay.
'to begin with' suggests taking the first letters.
'by' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'yankee' becomes 'Y' (phonetic alphabet: alpha, bravo, charlie etc.).
'outskirts of' means to remove the middle letters.
'gallipolis' with its middle taken out is 'gs'.
The initial letters of 'sharpened accurately' is 'sa'.
'sa'+'y'+'in'+'gs'='SAYINGS'
(Other definitions for sayings that I've seen before include "Comments" , "Maxims, adages" .)