function specs

[ZVONA at MIT-MC]

    However, the analogy above also indicates to me that function specs
    like (:PROPERTY FOO BAR) really are a kind of generalized name for
    a function.  If so, orthogonality demands that they be permissible
    in a lot of places where currently I believe they are not in Lisp Machine
    LISP:
    (a) In FUNCTION:  #'(:PROPERTY FOO BAR) ought to be legal.
    (b) As an argument to APPLY:  (APPLY '(:PROPERTY FOO BAR) args)
    (c) In ordinary function calls!  ((:PROPERTY FOO BAR) 5 7 :START 3 :END 5)

Empirical evidence:

I've seen naive users trying to put function specs in places like these,
and losing, and wondering what they did wrong.