Oct 22 2008
Bellwether
The AHD defines a bellwether as
One that serves as a leader or as a leading indicator of future trends.
The modern English meaning of a leader or leading indicator is derived from the older Middle English term for the bell-wearing sheep that led the flock; a wether is a castrated ram.
What’s interesting is that the word has slightly different connotations in British English, and American English. The AHD offers “The degree to which the paper is censored is a political bellwether” (Justine De Lacy) as an in context sentence, and it’s definition—”a leader or leading indicator”—is neutral in tone.
The OED offers, in addition to the traditional medieval (and still customary today) of a castrated ram wearing a bell, “a leader; contemptuously: the ring-leader, the worst of the lot.”
The figurative use of bellwether is always, apparently, insulting, in British English.
For those of you interested in the more gory linguistic details, wether is from *wet-2, the Proto Indo-European root linguists think probably meant “year,” and which also gave us veteran, and veal.
3 Responses to “Bellwether”
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That makes me worry that I have been using this word one way, and having people take it the other. I use it generally with a positive slanted in both countries having learned a rather literal defintion in NZ (where we do, after all, have a lot of sheep).
I’ll ask a poet friend of mine to check it in a Kiwi dictionary–there’s a “complete” one from Oxford. I grew up with sheep, and always heard it as a positive.
According to the New Zealand Oxford Dictionary, under the entry for “bell,” a bellwether is:
. The second definition, “ringleader,” does seem a bit negative.