cannon fodder
1 : soldiers regarded or treated as expendable in battle
2 : an expendable or exploitable person, group, or thing
//celebrities who have become cannon fodder for the tabloids
Recent Examples on the Web
//Newcastle and Arsenal are on the agenda after that, and both sides have iffy records against Watford - could be ideal cannon fodder to get Deulofeu back on track.
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SI.com, "Fantasy Premier League: Ones to Watch Ahead of Gameweek 3," 22 Aug. 2019
//In Tom Herman’s world, a walk-on isn’t another body to be used as cannon fodder for the program’s crop of four- and five-star recruits.
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Nick Moyle, ExpressNews.com, "Texas’ walk-on program taking on more importance as injuries mount," 19 Aug. 2019
//Too often, the field gets lost in the folds, depicted as cannon fodder and not world-class players.
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Jon Wertheim, SI.com, "Five Thoughts From Day Five at Wimbledon," 6 July 2018
//The lesson for Brennan’s generation of C.I.A. officers was a demoralizing one — that serving the president could sometimes mean acting as political cannon fodder when things went wrong.
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Mattathias Schwartz, New York Times, "A Spymaster Steps Out of the Shadows," 27 June 2018
//Now that tariffs are actually going into effect, the damage could be even greater — turning many farmers, some of whom were Trump supporters, into cannon fodder for his protectionist trade war.
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NBC News, "Mexico will impose 20 percent tariffs on U.S. pork," 5 June 2018
//Instead the Assad regime has turned to Shia militias, often made up of Afghans drafted and organised by Iran, as cannon fodder.
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The Economist, "Israel is determined to stop Iran from establishing bases in Syria," 12 Apr. 2018
//Yet a 64-team women’s tournament still looks like a bloated exercise in gender equity that only underscores the enormous differences between the teams with the big guns and those that annually act as cannon fodder.
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Tim Sullivan, The Courier-Journal, "Women's basketball needs madness – not sameness. NCAA Tournament is still too mismatched," 15 Mar. 2018
//Soldiers are fighting to preserve monarchies and a class system that views them as little more than cannon fodder.
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Gary Thompson, Philly.com, "'Journey's End': In the trenches with WWI soldiers," 28 Mar. 2018
First Known Use of cannon fodder
1847, in the meaning defined at sense 1
Dictionary Entries near cannon fodder