Talk:work a treat

RFM

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for moves, mergers and splits.

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Sense: "to function very well". The UK idiom would seem to be a treat. This should be reworded as an adverb and moved. Other adverbial uses of "a treat" include two that BNC shows ("look a treat" and "sound a treat") and one suggested by Equinox: "After a bit of polishing, though, the surface came up a treat." DCDuring TALK 13:54, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

And,

• But, before he could, a jackaroo straight out of college and all togged up a treat, rode up from the head station to see the drover and his mob through the run. (Under the mulga: a bush memoir, Jim Gasteen, 2005)
• Some new black paint would bring it up a treat. (Vestiges of Freedom, William Venator, 2004)
• The message finally hit home — we had been set up a treat by a couple of tarts. (Behind enemy lines: an Australian SAS soldier in Vietnam, Terry O'Farrell, 2001)

Pingku 14:33, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, move. (The redirect can't hurt, I suppose.)​—msh210℠ (talk) 17:02, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

At BNC "[work] a treat" occurred 16 times vs 6 for all others, so it would seem to be the most cliched form of this. DCDuring TALK 23:40, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

In that case, make mine "Yeah, move and redirect.".​—msh210℠ (talk) 15:48, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I have prepared an entry at [[a treat]], which seems to fit the results of google searches, deriving from "like a treat", I think. "Work a treat" my be an idiom on its own, as it is in the opinion of Cambridge Idioms. "Look a treat", "sound a treat" and the others seem to be addressed by [[a treat]]. Maybe we can keep [[work a treat]] as it is after all. DCDuring TALK 07:01, 16 July 2011 (UTC)