Wheelhouse - its origins and use

[frogman042]

I've seen the term 'Wheelhouse' used specifically around a question or category that falls within it. I've deduced that it basically means any question whose general subject matter covers what may be considered one owns area of expertise or knowledge base.

I'm curious how that term arose and is it used only in conjunction with game shows or is it used in other contexts as well.

Looking for enlightment.

---Jay (If you know how old Kurt Cobain was when e was arrested in 1985 for spray-painting "HOMO SEX RULES" on a bank... then you know the rest...)

[gsabc]

From Yahoo! Answers, and similar to a number of other sources:

Originally a nautical expression, the wheel house was the control center from which the boat or ship was steered. From there it has shifted to baseball where it seems to be used frequently. Essentially it means that you are in familiar territory and therefore at an advantage, when some one says you are in your wheelhouse. There is some argument as to whether it really originated from the wheel house or the pilot house on board a ship but there seems to be no other validated reference of origin

[christie1111]

I assumed it had to do with a pilot and his knowledge of the harbor.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/wheelhouse

When you come into a harbor on a large vessel, a local pilot has to come on board. Into the wheelhouse or where the steering wheel (helm) is.

He knows the harbor better than anyone.

[gsabc]

Paul Dickson, in his New Dickson Baseball Dictionary (Harcourt Brace & Company, 1999), defines "wheelhouse" in the baseball sense, which first appeared in print in 1959, as "That part of the strike zone in which the batter swings with the most power or strength; the path of the batter's best swing."

From word-detective.com, regarding the baseball usage of the term:

There are actually three possible origins for this baseball "wheelhouse": a ship's pilothouse, the locomotive turntable housing, or the paddlewheel housing on the stern of a riverboat. The argument for a ship's pilothouse being the source is that it is the center of control of the ship, so for a pitch to be "in the wheelhouse" would logically mean that it is under the batter's control in a way that other pitches are not.

On the other hand, it does seem more likely that the locomotive turntable "wheelhouse" (often called a "roundhouse") is the source, likening the awesome swing of the rail yard turntable to the batter's powerful swing. An additional argument for this theory is that sweeping side-arm pitches have been known as "roundhouse" pitches since about 1910, and, of course, the "roundhouse punch" is delivered with the same sort of motion. Thus, by 1959, this sort of "wheelhouse" had already been used as a metaphor for powerful motion for more than fifty years.