death seat
- noun
- Informal
:
asiento de la muerte
- After hearing the statistics, he refused to sit in the death seat of the car.
Examples
-
The safety report highlighted the death seat as the most hazardous position for passengers.
-
She is on the death seat.
Fiction book (2001) -
Many people believe that sitting in the death seat increases the risk of injury during an accident.
Synonyms
71
1.0
A seat at the front of a car next to the driver
How Dangerous
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is partly derivable: combining 'death' and 'seat' signals a seat associated with death or extreme danger, so a learner knowing both words will infer danger. However, the specific conventional reference to the front passenger seat (and the cultural belief that it is the most dangerous place) is not predictable from the constituents alone, so prior exposure is needed for the exact sense.
Etymology
Death seat is a name for the front passenger seat because it sits nearest the road and the front of the car, and in many crashes people in that seat suffered the worst injuries. So the words death and seat give a simple picture that the place is 'dangerous' and the one you should avoid.