Fodder

How to spell fodder

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce fodder

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does fodder mean?

1. nounCoarse food such as hay or straw given to cattle, horses, and other livestock.
2. nounPeople or material treated as expendable or used merely to supply a demand.

Fodder in a sentence

• The farmer stockpiled fodder in the barn before the first frost.

• The celebrity scandal became easy fodder for the tabloid press.

• During the drought the price of fodder for the dairy herd doubled.

• The generals treated the new recruits as little more than cannon fodder.

Where does fodder come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Fodder is a thoroughly native English word, descending from the Old English fodor, which meant food, and especially food given to animals. It belongs to the same Germanic family as the words food, feed, and foster, all of which trace back to a Proto-Germanic root meaning to nourish or to provide sustenance. From its earliest days the word leaned toward animal provender: the hay, straw, and grain heaped before livestock through the winter. Over the centuries it took on a vivid figurative life as well, describing any raw material consumed wholesale for a purpose, as in cannon fodder, the grimly disposable soldiers fed into battle. The doubled d simply reflects the short stressed vowel before it, which is the small trap that occasionally tempts writers toward a single d.

How the word is built

• fodder (from Old English fodor: food, especially for cattle)