bell cow

bell cow (plural bell cows)

1. The lead cow in a herd.
   • 1882, James Aitken, From the Clyde to California, Greenock: William Johnston, Chapter 2, pp. 27-28,

     [he] also keeps a number of cows, one of which has a bell hung round its neck, which keeps ringing with every motion of the cow. The other cows follow the “bell cow,” and thus their whereabouts in the forest are readily got at.

   • 1888, Opie Read, Up Terrapin River, Chicago: Rand McNally, Chapter 4, p. 60,

     The mornings were rosy, the noontide shone with a deeper red, but the evenings came, serenely stealing, it seemed, out of the heavily-wooded land, spreading over the fields and creeping along the hill-sides where the bell-cow rang her melancholy curfew.

2. (US, figuratively) A leader; an influencer[1].
   • 1929, Thorne Smith, The Stray Lamb, Chapter 17,

     She’s her own woman, major, first, last and all time. If she can’t be the bell cow she’s not going to trail along. That’s all there is to it.

   • 1951, Ernie Harwell, “Wanted: A Mr. Baseball,” The American Legion Magazine, Volume 50, No. 4, April 1951, p. 23,

     Who’s the logical successor? […] Any list would have to be headed by Joe DiMaggio, Ruth’s successor as the bell-cow of great New York Yankee teams.

   • 1986, Peter Hannaford, Talking Back to the Media, New York: Facts On File, Chapter 2, p. 29,

     When the issue is a political one, reporters tend to watch for the reactions of certain “bell cow” journalists.

   • 2008, Jack Flack, “How Goldman Spun the Inevitable Into Big News,” The New York Times, 17 November, 2008,

     Goldman is used to taking the lead. In fact, The Wall Street Journal’s Susanne Craig reported that other firms were standing by on a “Lloyd watch,” waiting to see what precedent would be set by Wall Street’s traditional bell-cow. As those firms now make their own inevitable bonus decisions, they will have to settle for “me-too” stories.

• cow bell, cowbell