Bust out those dictionaries, folks. Not everybody needs to, just the ones who don't who what an imp is.
We're guessing a lot of people had to pull out their dictionaries. You just don't hear the word "imp" very often at all.
Photo courtesy of gobiggreen.net
At
Cary (N.C.) they hear it all the time, because the school is the only one in the nation to go with Imps as its mascot name. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines an imp as "A small creature that plays harmful tricks in children's stories." In popular culture you can find them in video games and comic books.
Take a look at the mascot logo to get a sense of what an imp might look like. It certainly conveys a mischievous personality, and even adds little horns and a devil's trident to go with a menacing grin and some big-time muscles - just to make it a little scarier.
Imps may sound like it's a contraction of a longer mascot name, or maybe an acronym that has local ties. Heck, maybe it is short for shrimps or impostors. To some it surely comes off that way.
Hats off to Cary, the first public high school in the entire state of North Carolina. You've got a mascot logo that looks great and a name that is so unique that it caused us to dig into our dictionary.
