mascot

When you hear the word ‘mascot’, you probably think of someone dressed in an oversized costume running about at a sports event posing for pictures and hugging people. But in fact, the word ‘mascot’ has quite a sinister history, rooted in black magic and witches. OOOH.

Okay, I might have overegged the pudding ever so slightly. The word ‘mascot’ dates back to the 19th century, and comes from the French word ‘mascotte’, which was used to describe a lucky charm, talisman or magical object. This in turn came from ‘masco’, a Provençal (a dialect of southern France) term for a sorceress or witch. That probably comes from the Old Provençal word ‘masca’, meaning ‘mask’ or ‘spectre’. In the late 19th century, we started using the term to refer to a person, animal or object that brought luck or represents a group, like a sports team.

Sports team mascots are often chosen based on symbolism, characteristics or qualities that are supposed to bring positive energy or success. But sometimes they’re just downright scary. Take Kingsley, who represents Partick Thistle, a professional football club from Glasgow, and looks like a squashed sun with the cold dead eyes of a killer. He was designed by Turner Prize-nominated artist David Shrigley and was unveiled in 2015 to coincide with Thistle’s new sponsorship from investment firm Kingsford Capital Management. Reactions to Kingsley varied from ‘Lisa Simpson on meth’ to ‘the haggard face of the Teletubbies’ sun baby’. Kingsley also has the dubious honour of being the only mascot ever to earn a review from the Guardian’s art critic Jonathan Jones, who compared him to the monsters painted and sculpted by the surrealist Joan Miró. It obviously hit home as well, with Kingsley’s web page on the Partick Thistle site reading as follows:

‘There were a lot of mean things said about me when I first appeared, but I’m not too concerned because I know it’s what’s on the inside that counts. I’m a nice guy really – just a bit misunderstood … I might look a bit angry but I’m really very approachable and I love Partick Thistle. So don’t be scared to come and say hello if you see me out and about.’

Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?

WT actual F

wheelhouse

You’ve probably heard the phrase ‘that’s in my wheelhouse’ – it means that something is your area of expertise. But why wheel? And why is it in a house?

The word ‘wheelhouse’ has been around since the mid-19th century. Back then it meant exactly what it said on the tin – a building with a wheel in it, most usually on a boat or ship. In the nautical sense it referred to the place where the steering wheel was, i.e. where the captain was most likely to be found. It first appeared in writing in an 1835 travel memoir by an American writer called Joseph Holt Ingraham. He wrote: ‘The pilot (as the helms-man is here termed) stands in his lonely wheel-house.’ (Ingraham, who later became a clergyman, died by accidentally shooting himself at the age of 51 in the vestibule of his own church. That’s got to put a dent in your faith in the almighty.) Shortly after this, ‘wheelhouse’ appeared in an 1840 letter to Daniel Webster, then the American secretary of state, from a traveller who was on a ship that burned and then sunk (double whammy). He wrote that the ship’s captain ‘went into the wheel house, and that was the last I saw of him’. (You’ll be pleased to hear that the captain did manage to escape the on fire/sinking ship, along with three other people. The 136 passengers on the ship all drowned though. Wow, that’s really good captaining, mate.)

So how did ‘wheelhouse’ become a word for an area of expertise? Well, at some point in the 1950s (the internet wasn’t any clearer than that, sorry), baseball commentators and reporters picked up on the term and started using it to describe the area of the strike zone (I think this means where the batter swings the bat) that’s the prime spot for them to hit a home run. Which is a good thing, apparently. In the 1980s the term moved from sports writing into everyday language, when we started using it to figuratively describe an area in which someone excels.