shotgun seat

noun

US

: the front passenger seat of a vehicle

We blasted out of bayou country, Bernie behind the wheel, me in the shotgun seat.

—Spencer Quinn

see also ride shotgun at ride entry 1

Example Sentences

Recent Examples on the Web

Sansweet bought it when an insistent collector waylaid him outside the Pasadena Convention center and sold it to him out of the shotgun seat of his car for $400, to make rent. —Chase Difeliciantonio, San Francisco Chronicle, 25 Nov. 2021

Customers generally have an iPad mounted in their fire engine’s shotgun seat where the captain sits, as well as an iPad for battalion chiefs and other leaders. —Carolyn Said, San Francisco Chronicle, 3 Oct. 2021

Word History

Etymology

after ride shotgun "to occupy the seat next to the driver," from the practice in the U.S. West during the late 1800's of seating a guard armed with a shotgun next to the driver on stagecoaches containing valuables

Note: The phrase ride shotgun was used by the journalist and fiction writer Alfred Henry Lewis (1855-1914) in a short story published in 1912 ("Old Monte: Official Drunkard," Cosmopolitan Magazine, vol. 53, no. 4, September, 1912, p. 470). Cf. earlier shotgun messenger, denoting the guard sitting next to the coach driver (Express Gazette, vol. 18, no. 7, July 15, 1893, p. 159).

First Known Use

1940, in the meaning defined above