I agree. Though a more useful constructor would be nice for naked dicts. I've created a helper function that allows for nicer construction of dicts based on oth

I agree. Though a more useful constructor would be nice for naked dicts. I've created a helper function that allows for nicer construction of dicts based on other dicts and potential new fields: https://gist.github.com/24651d78d3f1e3dec6f4 https://gist.github.com/24651d78d3f1e3dec6f4 : def new_dict(args, *kwargs): """ Create new dicts >>> new_dict({1:2}, {2:5}, foo=5) {1: 2, 2: 5, 'foo': 5} """ d = {} for arg in args: d.update(arg) d.update(kwargs) return d d = new_dict(old_dict1, old_dict2, old_dictN, foo='bar')