Noun

(en noun)

Ursa Minor or Polaris, the North Star, used as a guide by navigators.

(figuratively) That which serves to guide or direct; a guiding star.

let faith be your cynosure to walk by

Something that is the center of attention; an object that serves as a focal point of attraction and admiration.

*1852 , (Alice Cary), Clovernook, or Recollections of our Neighborhood in the West :

*:The rooms were brilliant with lights and flowers, and gaiety and beauty, and intellect; and the lately shrinking country girl was the cynosure of all eyes---the most envied, the most dreaded, the most admired, the most loved.

*2002 , , The Great Nation , Penguin 2003, p. 306:

*:With anglophobia driving out anglophilia, the king – as during the Seven Years War – came to represent the very cynosure of patriotic zeal.

Noun

(archaic) Anything, as goods, etc., taken or got by violence; anything taken by force from an enemy in war; spoil; booty; plunder.

* Bible, Numbers xxxi. 12

And they brought the captives, and the prey , and the spoil, unto Moses, and Eleazar the priest.

That which is or may be seized by animals or birds to be devoured; hence, a person given up as a victim.

* Dryden

Already sees herself the monster's prey .

* Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

[The helmsman] steered with no end of a swagger while you were by; but if he lost sight of you, he became instantly the prey of an abject funk

A living thing that is eaten by another living thing.

* Bible, Job iv. ii

The old lion perisheth for lack of prey .

* {{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=May-June, author= William E. Conner

, title= An Acoustic Arms Race , volume=101, issue=3, page=206-7, magazine=(American Scientist) , passage=Nonetheless, some insect prey take advantage of clutter by hiding in it. Earless ghost swift moths become “invisible” to echolocating bats by forming mating clusters close (less than half a meter) above vegetation and effectively blending into the clutter of echoes that the bat receives from the leaves and stems around them.}}

The act of devouring other creatures; ravage.

* Shakespeare

Hog in sloth, fox in stealth, lion in prey .

The victim of a disease.