Hmmm, I see what you mean. On the other hand, one might also often do something like (keep even mylist), which doesn't have that problem and does, I think, read better. One good option might be to provide both forms (map and fmap (f for flip or function), for instance)--map would be used where the list was longer, and fmap where the function was. You could even maintain the n-arity of map by doing