How to Use cannon fodder in a Sentence

cannon fodder

noun
  • The poorly trained forces are little more than cannon fodder.
  • Still, both of these young queens are looking more and more like cannon fodder.
    — Jason P. Frank, Vulture, 24 Jan. 2025
  • Brake’s part is brief, while other cast members provide no more than cannon fodder.
    — Dennis Harvey, Variety, 21 Nov. 2025
  • Still, the more men run from the draft, the less cannon fodder the Kremlin can send to Ukraine.
    — Masha Gessen, The New Yorker, 5 Oct. 2022
  • Most of the men are there as voluntary cannon fodder for the spectacle.
    — Toby Muse, Rolling Stone, 3 Mar. 2024
  • Albertsons drivers are cannon fodder in this battle, but many, many more will face the same fate.
    — Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 5 Jan. 2021
  • Black parents in the city were angry that their children were being used as what seemed to some like cannon fodder.
    — Gal Beckerman, The Atlantic, 19 Jan. 2026
  • The main cast once again got off without any major deaths while great newcomers were killed off like cannon fodder.
    — Erik Kain, Forbes, 4 July 2022
  • Too often, the field gets lost in the folds, depicted as cannon fodder and not world-class players.
    — Jon Wertheim, SI.com, 6 July 2018
  • In Ukraine, these former inmates have been used mostly as cannon fodder.
    — Oleg Matsnev Gray Beltran, New York Times, 4 Dec. 2023
  • The most likely path for Russian reservists is as cannon fodder.
    — Kyle Mizokami, Popular Mechanics, 22 Sep. 2022
  • That kind of discomfort makes for excellent cannon fodder for the midterms.
    — Philip Elliott, TIME, 25 Feb. 2025
  • Fears of being 'cannon fodder' and a brutal response by police.
    — Editors, USA TODAY, 25 Sep. 2022
  • Ivy becomes easy cannon fodder, but A-Train comes through to save Hughie from a quick laser death.
    — Ben Rosenstock, Vulture, 8 Apr. 2026
  • This is a team that has lacked an identity all season, other than serving as cannon fodder for most of the rest of the league.
    — James Mirtle, New York Times, 11 Mar. 2026
  • These children are cannon fodder, dispensable pawns in someone else’s war.
    — Sara Holdren, Vulture, 13 Nov. 2025
  • Moreover, there is a cost to allowing allies to become cannon fodder.
    — The Editors, National Review, 8 Oct. 2019
  • Soldiers are fighting to preserve monarchies and a class system that views them as little more than cannon fodder.
    — Gary Thompson, Philly.com, 28 Mar. 2018
  • The right people were getting infected less, and the cannon fodder was leaping out of the trenches.
    — Alex Shephard, The New Republic, 10 Aug. 2021
  • Because of this, many adolescents were recruited and used as cannon fodder.
    — Karla Gachet, NPR, 3 Oct. 2025
  • Citizens are being asked to risk their lives for this idea, and Russian boys have been turned into cannon fodder.
    — Andrei Kolesnikov, Foreign Affairs, 22 Aug. 2023
  • Forces that were rushed to the front, like Wagner’s prison recruits, quickly became cannon fodder.
    — Thomas Gibbons-Neff, New York Times, 24 Apr. 2023
  • The Texas schools are just cannon fodder for Jalen and Tua’s Heisman campaigns.
    — Joseph Goodman | [email protected], al, 9 Oct. 2019
  • Fighters say that Moscow uses units of former inmates as cannon fodder.
    — New York Times, 15 Aug. 2023
  • Rumor had it that the Ukrainians were using volunteers as cannon fodder.
    — Seth Harp, Harper’s Magazine , 22 June 2022
  • They were convinced that I would be shot on Ukrainian territory or sent to the front as cannon fodder.
    — Kim Hjelmgaard, USA Today, 24 Aug. 2025
  • Regardless, this much is true – Cobolli is French Open cannon fodder no more.
    — Matthew Futterman, New York Times, 3 June 2026
  • The Kings, Preds, Mammoth ought to all be glorified cannon fodder.
    — Troy Renck, Denver Post, 13 Apr. 2026
  • Osechkin says the number of takers of such offers dropped off at one point when inmates began wising up to the fact that they might be used as cannon fodder.
    — Amy Kellogg, Fox News, 14 Aug. 2022
  • His was the generation that served as cannon fodder for World War II.
    — Daniel Ford, WSJ, 8 Mar. 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'cannon fodder.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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