Mascot

MASCOT

The term mascot – defined as a term for any person, animal, or object thought to bring luck[1] – colloquially (informally) includes anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name. Mascots are also used as fictional spokespeople for consumer products, such as the rabbit used in advertising and marketing for the General Mills brand of breakfast cereal, Trix.
In the world of sports, team mascots are often confused with team nicknames[2]. While the two can be interchangeable, they are not always the same. For example, the athletic teams of the University of Tennessee are nicknamed the Volunteers, while their mascot is a dog named Smokey. Team mascots may take the form of a logo, person, live animal, inanimate object, or a costumed character, and often appear at team matches and other related events. Since the mid-20th century, costumed characters have provided teams with an opportunity to choose a fantasy creature as their mascot, as is the case with the Philadelphia Phillies' mascot, the Phillie Phanatic.
Costumed mascots are commonplace, and are regularly used as goodwill ambassadors in the community for their team, company, or organization.

Mascot is a name for something that is supposed to bring luck. The word originally denoted a magical/religious fetish-like object but is now is most commonly used to describe characters or items used to represent an event or organisation.
Places
Mascot, New South Wales, a suburb of Sydney.
Mascot, Tennessee, a city in the United States.
Other uses
Mascot (software) is a search engine which uses mass spectrometry data to identify proteins from sequence databases.
"Mascot" is the NATO reporting name for the training version of the Soviet Ilyushin Il-28 bomber.
MASCOT (Realtime systems) is a design method for concurrent systems.
Mascot (car) was a car made by AB Rååverken
MASCOT (project) is a research project funded by the European Commission
Mascot Pictures Corporation was an American film studio
In music:
Dance of the Merry Mascots
Mascotte, a Belgian electro-rock band

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mascot