Cannon fodder. Meaning, origin, examples of the use of phraseological units

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Winged words, phraseological units. Meaning, history of origin, examples of use

Winged words, phraseological units

Directory / Winged words, phraseological units

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Cannon fodder

William Shakespeare

Phraseologism: Cannon fodder.

Meaning: Poorly trained and poorly equipped recruits.

Origin: The original source is the play "King Henry IV" by William Shakespeare (1564-1616). In it, Falstaff (act. 4, yavl. 2) speaks of the soldiers as "food (food) for gunpowder." But the expression entered the Russian language in a somewhat modified form, thanks to the French poet Francois Rene de Chateaubriand (1768-1848), who wrote about "cannon fodder" in his political pamphlet "On Bonaparte and the Bourbons." This pamphlet was published after the Allied troops entered Paris in 1814. In it, Chateaubriand calls for the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty and criticizes the brutality of the Napoleonic era. He writes that conscription into the army of Napoleon took place in conditions when the life of the French in the eyes of the authorities had lost all value. "Contempt for human life and for France," he writes, "has reached such a degree that recruits are called raw materials and cannon fodder." Chateaubriand's pamphlet, as well as his expression "cannon fodder", became widely known. Therefore, sometimes these words are quoted precisely in French: "chaire a canons", as, for example, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky does in Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace", watching Russian soldiers bathing, who will face a bloody, lost battle tomorrow .

Random phraseology:

Faith moves mountains.

Meaning:

Confidence in the rightness of one's own cause, in the correctness of one's choice helps to overcome all difficulties.

Origin:

From the Bible. Gospel of Matthew (17:20): "If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, and say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you."

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