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fodder

Pronunciation: /ˈfɒdə/

The English word “fodder” has 7 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. Food for animals; that which is fed to cattle, horses, and sheep, such as hay, cornstalks, vegetables, etc.
  2. A load: various English units of weight or volume based upon standardized cartloads of certain commodities, generally around 1000 kg.
  3. Tracing paper.
  4. Stuff; material; something that serves as inspiration or encouragement, especially for satire or humour.
  5. The text to be operated on (anagrammed, etc.) within a clue.
  6. People considered to have negligible value and easily available or expendable.

verb

  1. To feed animals (with fodder).

Etymology

From Middle English fodder, foder, from Old English fōdor (“feed; fodder”), from Proto-West Germanic *fōdr, from Proto-Germanic *fōdrą, from *fōdô (“food”), from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂- (“to guard, graze, feed”). Compare Saterland Frisian Fodder, West Frisian foer, Dutch voer (“pasture; fodder”), German Futter (“fodder; feed”), Danish foder, Swedish foder. More at food.

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.