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A mascot is any person, animal, or object thought to bring luck, or 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, representative 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, mascots are also used for merchandising. Team mascots are often confused with team nicknames.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Marc's Collection of Mascots: Introduction )〕 While the two can be interchangeable, they are not always the same. For example, the athletic teams of the University of Alabama are nicknamed the Crimson Tide, while their mascot is an elephant named Big Al. 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, sports mascots are often used as marketing tools for their teams to children. 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 such as the U.S. Forest Service's Smokey Bear. == Etymology == The word ''mascot'' has been traced back to a dialectal use in Provence and Gascony in France, where it was used to describe anything which brought luck to a household.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Online Etymology Dictionary )〕 The French word "mascotte" (Provençal version: "mascoto") means talisman, charm, and is derivative of the word "masco" meaning sorceress. The word was first popularized in 1880, when French composer Edmond Audran wrote a popular comic operetta titled ''La Mascotte''. However, it had been in use in France long before this, as French slang among gamblers, derived from the Occitan word ''masco'', meaning "witch" (perhaps from Portuguese ''mascotto'', meaning "witchcraft"), and also ''mascoto'', meaning "spell". Audran's operetta was so popular that it was translated into English as ''The Mascot'', introducing into the English language a word for any animal, person, or object that brings good luck. The word with this definition was then incorporated into many other languages, although often in the French form ''mascotte''. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「mascot」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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