pilot fish

British  

noun

1. a small carangid fish, Naucrates ductor, of tropical and subtropical seas, marked with dark vertical bands: often accompanies sharks and other large fishes

2. any of various similar or related fishes

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Example Sentences

“They’re like pilot fish eating off the back of the shark,” said Jonathan Bush, a founder of Athenahealth, a health technology company that has developed electronic medical records and billing systems.

From Seattle Times

Then came television and then high-decibel duels on television and then Trump, the shark to Carlson’s pilot fish.

From New York Times

The pilot fish has grown his own mighty jaws, and the ocean’s only a little bit safer.

From New York Times

If Frieze is the shark, they’re the pilot fish.

From Los Angeles Times

An elegant mix of biography, history and art, it tells the life story of a now little-known 19th-century Paris doctor, whom he deploys as “a sort of pilot fish” to explore the murky waters beneath the glittering surface of the belle epoque, “an age of neurotic, even hysterical national anxiety, filled with political instability, crises and scandals”.

From The Guardian