Meaning
Soldiers regarded by their commanders as expendable raw material to be consumed by the enemy's guns; by extension, anyone used thoughtlessly to further someone else's aims, especially in a struggle they did not choose. Strongly derogatory toward whoever does the expending. Harsh and accusatory; implies callous leadership rather than mere misfortune. Regional use: General English (19th-century military metaphor).
Origin
Built on fodder, feed for livestock: the men are imagined as food for cannon. The English metaphor has a Shakespearean ancestor in Falstaff's 'food for powder' (Henry IV Part 1), and the earliest fixed phrase of this family is French: Chateaubriand's 1814 pamphlet De Buonaparte et des Bourbons attacked the contempt in which officials held conscripts as 'la chair a canon'. The English compound is dated 1847 in etymological references and is usually described as a loan translation of German Kanonenfutter; printed attestations include a translated story in Wisconsin's Janesville Daily Gazette (1854) and London's Morning Chronicle (1861). The borrowing direction is murkier than often claimed, because German lexicography itself first attests Kanonenfutter only in the 19th century and treats it as modelled on the Shakespearean English 'food for powder', so the imagery plainly circulated between languages. First World War reporting made the phrase common property.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- fodder for the guns
- food for powder
- gun fodder
Usage Examples
- Critics accused the league of treating reserve players as cannon fodder to fatten the top clubs' schedules.
- Interns on that desk are cannon fodder for the partners; the turnover would embarrass a regiment.
- The new recruits were sent forward with almost no training, and the veterans quietly called them cannon fodder.