fodder

/ˈfɑdər/

/ˈfɒdə/

Other forms: foddering; foddered; fodders

Fodder is cheap food, usually given to livestock animals like cows. If you gave a cow caviar or homemade scones, that would not be fodder. Try cornstalks.

Fodder is not just used to describe cattle feed. We use the word to talk about other kinds of feeding that don't involve actual food. A new celebrity marriage is fodder for gossip magazines. In war, the soldiers most likely to be killed, are called cannon fodder, from the times when armies used canons instead of drone aircraft dropping missiles.

Definitions of fodder

1. noun

   coarse food (especially for livestock) composed of entire plants or the leaves and stalks of a cereal crop
   types:

   eatage, forage, grass, pasturage, pasture

   bulky food like grass or hay for browsing or grazing horses or cattle

   alfalfa

   leguminous plant grown for hay or forage

   broad bean, horse bean

   a bean plant cultivated for use animal fodder

   hay

   grass mowed and cured for use as fodder

   stover

   the dried stalks and leaves of a field crop (especially corn) used as animal fodder after the grain has been harvested

   timothy

   a grass grown for hay

   type of:

   feed, provender

   food for domestic livestock
2. verb

   give fodder (to domesticated animals)
   type of:

   feed, give

   give food to
3. noun

   an inferior but widely available resource used to supply heavy demand
4. noun

   soldiers who are regarded as expendable in the face of artillery fire
   synonyms: cannon fodder, fresh fish

   type of:

   soldier

   an enlisted man or woman who serves in an army