Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Alternative spelling of bellwether.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • And as you see once again ‘the self-elite’ and ‘their media’ with coldly-calculated mentally-jazzing razzmatazz are parading before you only their choice of ever more venal and corrupted smirking and posturing apes to be your bell-wether ‘leaders’ to further mad excess to put our populations and our armies at the disposal of the international vermins 'interests of constant war and insatiable acquisition ...

    Migraine, asthma and . . . 2008

  • In fact, you act as a bell-wether for us as the more ridiculous your spin and the more prevarication you deploy the more we know that Labour is in terminal decline.

    Lib Dem Campaigns: Iain Dale Writes Crap Shock 2008

  • And as you see once again ‘the elite’ and ‘the media’ with coldly-calculated mentally-jazzing razzmatazz are parading before you only their choice of ever more venal and corrupted smirking and posturing apes to be your bell-wether ‘leaders’ to further mad excess ...

    Migraine, asthma and . . . 2008

  • When the old bell-wether at the head rattles his bell, the mountains do indeed skip like rams and the little hills like lambs.

    Walden 2004

  • That is another simple sin in you, to bring the ewes and the rams together and to offer to get your living by the copulation of cattle; to be bawd to a bell-wether, and to betray a she-lamb of a twelvemonth to a crooked-pated, old, cuckoldly ram, out of all reasonable match.

    As You Like It 2004

  • They are like sheep following the bell-wether just as he leads them.

    The Art of Controversy 2004

  • In every flock they train one of the rams for bell-wether.

    The History of Animals 2002

  • The herdsmen tame the castrated bulls, and give them an office in the herd analogous to the office of the bell-wether in a flock; and these bulls live to an exceptionally advanced age, owing to their exemption from hardship and to their browsing on pasture of good quality.

    The History of Animals 2002

  • The goat lives for eight years and the sheep for ten, but in most cases not so long; the bell-wether, however, lives to fifteen years.

    The History of Animals 2002

  • With goats the shepherds appoint no bell-wether, as the animal is not capable of repose but frisky and apt to ramble.

    The History of Animals 2002

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