trick or treat
8
2.5
- noun
- /trɪk ɔr trit/
- Baby Talk
:
truco o trato
- On Halloween night, the children shouted, "trick or treat," as they knocked on the doors.
- go trick or treat
- kids trick or treat
- say 'trick or treat'
And I also thought I'd bring you guys with kind of a little trick or treat.
- And I also thought I'd bring you guys with kind of a little trick or treat.
Examples
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Most of us fall into one of two camps: those who have kids who go trick-or-treating and those who stay home handing out treats.
Blog text (6) -
So if we went trick-or-treating together, I would give you most of it.
Blog text (6) -
- KIDS: Trick or treat!
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You know him and Bob Hope, they had the best houses to trick or treat at when I was a kid.
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Well, tomorrow is trick or treat.
Blog text (24) -
Okay, Phillip, all ya got to do is knock on the door, and when they open it, you say 'trick or treat.'
Fiction book (1993) -
She went trick or treating with her brothers.
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She went out trick-or-treating and she disappeared.
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Let's trick or treat!
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Every year all the gang had gone trick-or-treating together: Allison and Robbie, Maryanne and John, Sandra and Willona, and Felix and Randall.
Fiction book (1999)
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase literally combines 'trick' (a prank) and 'treat' (a reward), so a learner who knows the words can infer a choice between a prank or a reward, giving partial comprehension. However, the full meaning — a conventionalized Halloween ritual where children request sweets with an implied playful threat — depends on cultural/pragmatic knowledge and is not fully predictable from the constituents alone.
Etymology
Trick or treat comes from a simple deal children made on Halloween: they asked for a treat, meaning 'a sweet', and hinted at a trick, meaning 'a small prank', if they did not get one. That's why today trick or treat is the friendly call children use when going door to door to ask for sweets.