"jail fodder" meaning in English

See jail fodder in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Etymology: From jail + fodder, i.e. food to be fed to jails. Probably by analogy with cannon fodder. Etymology templates: {{compound|en|jail|fodder}} jail + fodder Head templates: {{en-noun|-}} jail fodder (uncountable)
  1. A person with criminal tendencies who is considered to be expendable, worth nothing more than to occupy a jail. Tags: uncountable Synonyms: jailfodder
    Sense id: en-jail_fodder-en-noun-ZayCE-Tl Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries

Alternative forms

{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "jail",
        "3": "fodder"
      },
      "expansion": "jail + fodder",
      "name": "compound"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From jail + fodder, i.e. food to be fed to jails. Probably by analogy with cannon fodder.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "-"
      },
      "expansion": "jail fodder (uncountable)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "Coordinate term: jailbait"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1985, Anthony Burgess, chapter 4, in The Kingdom of the Wicked, London: Hutchinson:",
          "text": "Philos grew redly truculent. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I don’t need the advice of a lump of Jewish jailfodder—’",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2001, Alan Taylor, chapter 14, in American Colonies, Penguin, published 2002, page 315:",
          "text": "Between 1718 and 1775, the empire transported about fifty thousand felons, more than half of all English emigrants to America during that period. The transported were overwhelmingly young, unmarried men with little or no economic skill: the cannon fodder of war and the jail fodder of peace.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "text": "2016, Vickie Roach, quoted in Elle Hunt, “Safe space,” The Guardian, 24 November, 2016,\nThe history of Australia since colonisation has been telling us that we’re stupid, dumb, we’re drunks, we’re just jail fodder, we’re all criminals, we’re dirty, we can’t look after our kids, we all sniff petrol, now we do ice."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A person with criminal tendencies who is considered to be expendable, worth nothing more than to occupy a jail."
      ],
      "id": "en-jail_fodder-en-noun-ZayCE-Tl",
      "links": [
        [
          "criminal",
          "criminal"
        ],
        [
          "expendable",
          "expendable"
        ]
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "jailfodder"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "uncountable"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "jail fodder"
}
{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "jail",
        "3": "fodder"
      },
      "expansion": "jail + fodder",
      "name": "compound"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From jail + fodder, i.e. food to be fed to jails. Probably by analogy with cannon fodder.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "-"
      },
      "expansion": "jail fodder (uncountable)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English compound terms",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English uncountable nouns",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "Coordinate term: jailbait"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1985, Anthony Burgess, chapter 4, in The Kingdom of the Wicked, London: Hutchinson:",
          "text": "Philos grew redly truculent. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I don’t need the advice of a lump of Jewish jailfodder—’",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2001, Alan Taylor, chapter 14, in American Colonies, Penguin, published 2002, page 315:",
          "text": "Between 1718 and 1775, the empire transported about fifty thousand felons, more than half of all English emigrants to America during that period. The transported were overwhelmingly young, unmarried men with little or no economic skill: the cannon fodder of war and the jail fodder of peace.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "text": "2016, Vickie Roach, quoted in Elle Hunt, “Safe space,” The Guardian, 24 November, 2016,\nThe history of Australia since colonisation has been telling us that we’re stupid, dumb, we’re drunks, we’re just jail fodder, we’re all criminals, we’re dirty, we can’t look after our kids, we all sniff petrol, now we do ice."
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A person with criminal tendencies who is considered to be expendable, worth nothing more than to occupy a jail."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "criminal",
          "criminal"
        ],
        [
          "expendable",
          "expendable"
        ]
      ],
      "tags": [
        "uncountable"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "jailfodder"
    }
  ],
  "word": "jail fodder"
}

Download raw JSONL data for jail fodder meaning in English (2.0kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-21 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (d8cb2f3 and 4e554ae). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.