wheelhouse

name

1. A surname.

noun

Etymology: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *kʷel- Proto-Indo-European *kʷekʷléh₂ Proto-Germanic *hweulō Old English hwēol Middle English whel English wheel Proto-Indo-European *(s)kewH-der.? Proto-Germanic *hūsą Proto-West Germanic *hūs Old English hūs Middle English hous English house English wheelhouse From wheel + house. Sense 3 (“(baseball) a pitch location which is favourable to the hitter”) references the fact that a vessel is controlled from its wheelhouse (sense 1.2), and sense 4 (“a person’s area of authority or expertise”) is a figurative use of sense 3.

1. A building or other structure containing a (large) wheel, such as the water wheel of a mill.

   “A machine with two pair of moulds only, will make from fifty to seventy thousand bricks per week. But if the regular market be large, it can, by using a steam machine of 10 horse power, work sixteen moulds, (four on each side of the wheel house,) and make two hundred thousand bricks per week.”

   “The mill was driven by an overshot wheel twenty-seven and a half feet in diameter, placed in a separate wheel-house, built of stone, between the mill and a bank thirty feet high, upon which the water was brought by a canal.”

2. A building or other structure containing a (large) wheel, such as the water wheel of a mill.

   “This invention relates to an improved device for hanging the body of carriages having a so-called "cut-under" or wheel-house, such as a common rockaway, extension-top phaeton, coupé-rockaway, &c., [...]”

   “To install a new outer wheelhouse in a convertible, measure (at 1-in. intervals) the distance from the reinforcement that runs along the top of the old wheelhouse to the flange where the inner and outer wheelhouses are joined. Then transfer these measurements onto the new wheelhouse.”

3. A building or other structure containing a (large) wheel, such as the water wheel of a mill.

   “Captain Waterman was on the wheel-house at the time of the explosion, attending to the landing of passengers from the small boat. He noticed a movement over the boilers, and immediately jumped or was thrown upon the forward deck. He was somewhat bruised, but not seriously injured.”

   “The wheel-house is a small room or closet, with windows in front, built on the deck, in the forward part of the boat, where the helmsman stands to steer. The windows in the front of the wheel-house are for him to look out, and see where he is going. [...] There is a large wheel in this place, which is the reason why they call it the wheel-house. The wheel has handles to it, all around, for the man to take hold of, to turn the wheel one way or the other.”

4. A building or other structure containing a (large) wheel, such as the water wheel of a mill.

   “PLATE XXVII.—Details of the Paddle Wheel of the Steamboat "North America." Fig. 1, shows the outside framing of the paddle-box, or as it is frequently termed, the wheel-house; also an elevation of the paddle-wheel, shewing the arrangement of the buckets, arms, centre-plate, &c.”

   “These little rooms have each a half glass door, which opens on a gallery running all round the boat, with only the interruption of the wheel-houses, outside of which is a door of Venetian blinds, which being thrown open, you can sit in your room and see every object on one side of the river.”

5. A prehistoric structure from the Iron Age found in Scotland, characteristically including an outer wall within which a circle of stone piers (resembling the spokes of a wheel) form the basis for lintel arches supporting corbelled roofing with a hearth at the hub.

   “Most Celtic houses in Britain were simply constructed. They were generally round as in the remains of the house at Little Woodbury in Wiltshire, the wheelhouse at Jarlshof in Shetland, or the house on an unenclosed platform at Greenknowe in Berwickshire. [...] The roof of the Greenknowe house was conical. It had rafters fanning outwards from a high top, like the spokes of an umbrella. You can see why it is called a wheelhouse. The rafters were held at their lower ends on a horizontal ring of timber that rested on vertical posts with Y-shaped tops.”

   “Ancestors of the historical Picts can be credited with the structural form of the wheelhouse with its western and northern affinities, and with the souterrain, and distribution and function of which is becoming clearer, but which may now be thought to have persisted in evolved form until the middle part of the first millennium AD [...].”

6. A pitch location which is favourable to the hitter.

   “The pitch was right in his wheelhouse, and he hit a grand slam.”

   “The ball was up in my wheelhouse, and I got round on it, got the meat of that Ritchie Ashburn bottle bat solidly on the ball. I'll never in my life hit a ball any better.”

7. A person's area of authority or expertise.

   “Horse viruses are in Pat’s wheelhouse.”

   “Turning out terrific subordinates was not in her wheelhouse. [...] But she did so, mostly by force of will and with a number of false starts and midcourse corrections, and went on to become an icon in her industry.”

8. A set of skills necessitated by a situation.

   “Ever since I started taking antipsychotics, managing my mental health has been a whole different wheelhouse.”