bellwether vs flagship

bellwether

noun
  • Anything that indicates future trends. 

  • A stock or bond that is widely believed to be an indicator of the overall market's condition. 

  • The leading sheep of a flock, having a bell hung round its neck. 

flagship

noun
  • The most important one out of a related group. 

  • The ship occupied by the fleet's commander (usually an admiral); it denotes this by flying his flag. 

  • The ship regarded as most important out of a group, e.g. a nation's navy or company's fleet. 

verb
  • To act as a flagship for. 

How often have the words bellwether and flagship occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )