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backseat

nounA2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechleans spoken

The backseat is the row of seats behind the driver in a car. Where the children sit and the arguments happen.

British English usually writes it as two words and American as one. The most useful thing the word has given English is the backseat driver, meaning a passenger who tells the driver what to do, which has become the standard name for anybody offering unwanted instructions about a job that is not theirs. Taking a back seat means deliberately letting somebody else lead.

Definitions of backseat

  1. 1nounbackseatThe seat behind the driver in a vehicle.A2

    “The shopping is on the backseat.”

Also accepted in games: back seat

Phrases it lives in

  • take a back seat — deliberately let somebody else take the leading role

Where it comes from

From back + seat.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Travel & Transport, A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 21 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

backseat in the wild

  • The killer in the backseat (also known as High Beams) is an urban legend from the United States and United Kingdom.

    Killer in the backseat

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.