food for powder

food for powder (uncountable)

1. Dated form of cannon fodder.
   • c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene ii], page 67, column 2:

     Tut, tut, good enough to toſſe: foode for Powder, foode for Powder: they'll fill a Pit, as well as better: tuſh man, mortall men, mortall men.

   • 1844 January–December, W[illiam] M[akepeace] Thackeray, “In Which Barry Tries to Remove as Far from Military Glory as Possible”, in “The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq. [The Luck of Barry Lyndon.]”, in Miscellanies: Prose and Verse, volume III, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1856, →OCLC:

     The great and illustrious Frederick had scores of these white slave-dealers all round the frontiers of his kingdom, debauching troops or kidnapping peasants, and hesitating at no crime to supply those brilliant regiments of his with food for powder; […]

   • 1903 October, Jack London, The People of the Abyss, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:

     A soldier, as Bernard Shaw has said, “ostensibly a heroic and patriotic defender of his country, is really an unfortunate man driven by destitution to offer himself as food for powder for the sake of regular rations, shelter, and clothing.”