Trick or Treat

[degustibus]

Where I lived it was often trick and treat.


>
> 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


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