I think that's just an artifact of how currying is usually specified. Imagine a language with no automatic currying, but the special name "_" makes the function

I think that's just an artifact of how currying is usually specified. Imagine a language with no automatic currying, but the special name "_" makes the function partially applied: "let addFiveToEach = map addFive _" (or "map (+ 5 _) _"). Then you can also do "let eachInList = map _ list", and you don't have to choose between them. It does sacrifice some use cases, such as not knowing the total number of parameters, and does add more line noise. But I would be pretty happy with this tradeoff.