the.com/mastermind
The person who takes credit for the plan and the blame for the plan.
means A person who devises and directs a complex, often devious, scheme — the brain behind an operation.
from Originally just 'master' + 'mind,' meaning a superior intellect, used plainly in the 1800s for brilliant thinkers. The word curdled in the 20th century into its modern criminal-mastermind sense — the shadowy genius behind a heist or plot — thanks largely to pulp fiction and detective stories needing someone to blame the scheme on. The board game of the same name (guessing colored pegs) borrowed the word's air of clever calculation, not its villainy.
- origin
- Popularized by a 1970s guessing-game show
- legal term
- Used to pin conspiracies on one brain
- irony
- Usually needs a team to execute anything