Its core lives in Lisp dialects like Emacs Lisp just fine. Try GNU Emacs and the REPL: M-x ielm *** Welcome to IELM *** Type (describe-mode) for hel

Its core lives in Lisp dialects like Emacs Lisp just fine. Try GNU Emacs and the REPL: M-x ielm *** Welcome to IELM *** Type (describe-mode) for help. ELISP> (append '(this is a Lisp) '(REPL)) (this is a Lisp REPL) ELISP> (cons 'This (append '(is a) (list 'Lisp 'REPL))) (This is a Lisp REPL) This code is from McCarthy's Lisp 1.5 Programmer's manual, from 1962, running in Common Lisp: CL-USER 6 > (defun my-length (l) (prog (u v) (setq v 0) (setq u l) a (cond ((null u) (return v))) (setq u (cdr u)) (setq v (+ v 1)) (go a))) MY-LENGTH CL-USER 7 > (my-length '(1 2 3 4 5)) 5 That's why it's called a 'Lisp' -> it runs Lisp code.