Weather vane

From the graveyard gate one can count a dozen gayly painted farmhouses; the gilded weather-vanes on the big red barns wink at each other across the green and brown and yellow fields.

This one is surmounted by a clock-tower with a bent weather-vane - the latter being the only disorderly object in sight.

Since Elaine Showalter's 1985 article on the topic, Ophelia has been singled out as a role that depends for its power on the expression of female sexual desire, and, because of this, one that acts as a weather vane for attitudes towards women's sexuality.

Possibly though the best weather vane of the shippers' condition is the attitude of the mill trade as a whole toward present laxness in new orders.

But since this measure involves comparing the private judgments of different sets of teachers, it is less reliable as a weather vane of achievement than the results of standardized tests.

The man who changes with every wind of doctrine is not a thinker but a weather vane.

Laval was a political weather vane, perpetually mobile, but always resting on the same base, himself, the Talleyrand of Aubervilliers.

<> repeated the federalist, appalled as always by the weather vane attitude that the Syndicate was well-known for adopting at such times, yet not letting his personal opinion transpire, <> he insisted, much to the astonishment of his interlocutor.