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cannon fodder

noun

Etymology

Mid-19th century, from cannon (“artillery piece”) + fodder (“food”), a calque of German Kanonenfutter, itself possibly a calque of English food for powder. See the German for more.

  1. calqued from Kanonenfutter

Definitions

  1. Military forces considered to be expendable.

    • "A foolish old half-pay officer," boomed Sir Hilton. "Go back to your club, sir, and play bridge with other superannuated cannon-fodder, sir."
    • Soviet communism is trying to make these nations into colonies, and to use their people as cannon fodder in new wars of conquest.
    • A Russian governor in Siberia has been confronted by angry citizens who blamed him for deploying a local riot police unit to Ukraine to become “cannon fodder”, a video clip circulating online showed.

  2. Any group of contestants that have no hope of success.

  3. Artillery ammunition.

  4. ›+ 1 more definition

    1. An expendable minor character primarily included to make the protagonist(s) stand out.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for cannon fodder. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA