Trick or Treat

[Laurence Horn]

At 7:01 PM -0400 6/29/03, sagehen wrote:
>Whether the expression "trick or treat" does I don't know, but certainly
>the custom goes back farther than '39 or '37.  Both the door-to-door
>begging and the pranks were regularly practiced in the Lincoln NE of my
>childhood.  Perhaps without the /or/, since the pranks occurred whether the
>begging yielded results or not!  Soaping windows was the most common
>practice, but the occasional small fire was set, and, where available,
>privies were overturned.
>A. Murie

What's especially odd here is the order, which if memory serves is
attributed by Cooper & Ross ("World Order", 1975) to a priority of
the phonology over the semantics.  The problem with the latter is
that it suggests "If I don't perform some mischief on you, you will
give me (have given me?) a treat", when of course the idea is the
other way around--so "Treat or trick" would make more sense.

larry