Did you mean pilot Fish?
Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A pelagic carangoid fish, Naucrates ductor, found in all warm seas, and occasionally on the Atlantic coast of the United States. It somewhat resembles a mackerel, being of fusiform shape, bluish color, with from five to seven dark vertical bars, and the first dorsal fin represented by a few spines. It is a foot or more long. The pilot-fish is supposed by some to have been the pompilus of the ancients, but the traditions respecting it have little foundation in fact. The generic name Naucrates was applied by the ancients to species of Echeneis and other fishes with a suctorial disk. See cut under
Naucrates . - n. plural A term extended to all the Carangidæ.
- n. A remora or sucking-fish of the family Echeneididæ, as Echeneis naucrates.
- n. A coregonid. Coregonus guadrilateralis, the Menomonee white-fish or shad-waiter of New England, some of the Great Lakes, and parts of British America to Alaska.
Examples
“As a day trader, he gambled on abstractions, riding, pilot-fish style, the tiny gyrations of companies whose products he had no hand in producing.”
“Why can't you do your job on your own instead of following me about like pilot-fish hanging on for the pickings?”
The 9th Directive
“As the Javelin began to settle complacently into the outermost reaches of the atmosphere of that abandoned, incredibly rich planet, the smooth, blown-steel, pilot-fish shapes of the blind little ships came raining down around her out of the blackness, spitting needles of white fire.”
And all the Stars a Stage
“Often small fish allied to the mackerel accompany them, as does also the pilot-fish of the shark.”
“Alighting at the ferry, they started up Front street, Rose in lead, he being pilot-fish.”
Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison Fifteen Years in Solitude
“Well they knew that one drop of blood would have been scented by the everlasting pilot-fish, the jackalls of the shark; and that their destruction was inevitable, if one only of these monsters should discover this rich repast, or be led to its food by the little rapid hunter of its prey.”
“Still, you know Moggridge has taken care that the bait carefully conceals the snare within, and the pilot-fish are none the wiser.”
“The sailors called it a pilot-fish, and they informed me that sharks are very seldom without one or two, and that they appear to direct them where to go; this last must be mere conjecture.”
“The pilot-fish is generally about a foot long, and in shape like a mullet.”
“A monstrous shark drifted lazily past, his dorsal fin now and then cutting the surface like a knife and glistening like polished steel, his brace of pilot-fish darting hither and thither, striped like little one-legged harlequins.”
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873
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