"Travelin' shotgun"

[Wilson Gray]

Maybe this shift is a result of the death of the horse opera, when
evryone knew what the literal meaning of "ride shotgun" was. I asked
my seventeen-year-old niece what it meant to "ride shotgun" and she
unhesitatingly replied that it mean to go riding with one's best
friends.

I guess that the fact that the person who rides shotgun sits in the
"friendliest" position, so to speak, WRT the driver, has led
youngsters to reanalyze "shotgun seat" as "best-buddy's seat," and
it's downhill all the way from there.

When I was a teener in Saint Louis, we called it the "death seat," a
phrase borrowed from movie public-service ads related to the dangers
of driving. The person sitting next to the driver in those
pre-seatbelt, pre-airbag days was the person most likely to be the
person killed in an accident.

-Wilson

On 11/29/06, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      "Travelin' shotgun"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Today's _N.Y. Post_ features a front-page photo of Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spiers, and Paris Hilton smiling together in the back seat of a limousine. Those given to suspicion that the picture does not really illustrate the day's most significant news story should think again: the headline clearly states "BIMBO SUMMIT !"  And if that's not big news, I don't know what is.
>
>   All this by way of context. Commenting on the photo, Fox's Steve Doocy exclaimed in his folksy way, "And they're travelin'  shotgun !"
>
>   What's that mean ?  "Riding together,"  evidently. (I understand "riding shotgun"- sitting in the front passenger sea t- but it's nothing to get excited about.)
>
>   A rapid Google search reveals [www.mkivsupra.net/vbb/archive/index.php/t-51280.html]:
>
>             I was coming but Laz (won't lend me) the Supe (heehee) I was going to travel shotgun with Soo but think she may have other plans."
>
>   JL
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta.
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--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Sam Clemens

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