You are correct (you do have to check that the symbol is actually bound prior to dereferencing). But they don't (generally) work that way for symbols with a fu

You are correct (you do have to check that the symbol is actually bound prior to dereferencing). But they don't (generally) work that way for symbols with a function binding. I think the rationale here is that it's much more common to have BOUNDP symbols than FBOUNDP symbols. So sticking an extra slot for the value in a symbol is worth it, space-wise, whereas an extra slot for the function is not, so function lookups go through some sort of global table. Note too that Common Lisp forbids you from modifying the function binding of symbols in the COMMON-LISP package for precisely this reason: the compiler can do a better job reasoning about the effects of calls to those functions.