in the saddle

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Meaning · English

in control or charge of a situation

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

điều khiển hoặc kiểm soát tình hình

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: on a horse
Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

Before others his attitude was deferential and circumspect but when they rode alone, he treated her with the easy familiarity of an equal.
The national guilt over the destruction of native American culture is merely a part of the regret at the heart of the genre.

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.

Common questions

What does “in the saddle” mean?

in control or charge of a situation Literally: on a horse

Is “in the saddle” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.