ride shotgun
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
sit in the front passenger seat of a vehicle
Literally: ride next to the driver with a shotgun
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
Paints supplied by Courtaulds Aerospace's Shildon site in the UK coat the Warrior combat vehicles used by the United nations to ride shotgun for humanitarian aid convoys.
The official mandate of the United Nations Protection Force is to ‘ ride shotgun’ with relief convoys, but the British battalion has stretched that mandate into a peacemaking role.
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 “ride shotgun” mean?
sit in the front passenger seat of a vehicle Literally: ride next to the driver with a shotgun
Is “ride shotgun” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.