Yep, the funcall semantics of symbols and keywords are to forward the symbol and key itself along with the arguments to the get function. I do sometimes use th

Yep, the funcall semantics of symbols and keywords are to forward the symbol and key itself along with the arguments to the get function. I do sometimes use this notation, mostly when: - the map could be nil. (get nil :foo) and (:foo nil) will return nil, but (nil :foo) will throw an exception. - dealing with struct-maps, where the key can effectively be seen as an accessor function. (cf structs in CL) - (rarely) when the expression evaluating to the map is long and complex. A keyword in the function position (a) makes it clear that what follows must be a map or set and (b) you don't have to start counting parens.