“He envied the young officer who had pushed the guy into the back seat and slammed the door shut before reporting in on the radio” “The woman picked up a woven basket and hopped into the back seat.” “She climbed into the back seat and the car rolled forward and stopped again.” “I took Alice along to sit on the back seat and steady those boxes all the way to Greenville” “If he got lucky and made it there with a lot of time to spare, his laptop was on the back seat, and he had a ton of paperwork to catch up on.” “You can disassemble the tripod and place it on the backseat of your car.” “They drove him twenty miles to a hospital, my mother sitting in the back seat with the old man’s head in her lap.” “When riding in the backseat with two other people, you may sit on either side but never on the ‘hump.’” “He takes the sleeping child and places him in the backseat for the woman.” Also, both back seat and backseat appear to be in equally common use. Generally, you use in and into for people, and on and onto for objects, although sometimes people are on a backseat, though typically only if they are not sitting normally. You can only use into and onto for motions, while in and on can be used for either state or motion. If you are speaking literally about placing objects or people into the back seat of a vehicle, you can use in, on, into, or onto, depending on the circumstance. There aren’t any idiomatic uses of put * the backseat in the COCA so I don’t think the idiom you thought you were trying to use is one that is in common use. “Whatever biological imperatives this trip began with, they’re now taking a back seat to male pride” “But questions like these take a back seat to more pressing concerns” “Problems of the developing world, which have often taken a backseat at G-8 summits, look likely to be pushed to the sidelines yet again” “Search and rescue had taken a backseat to all the duties of a sheriff to serve and protect” ![]() “The sandwich was gooey from cheese and crisp from the grill, though the ham took a backseat to the other ingredients.” Here are some examples of this idiom from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA): If you’re in the driver’s seat, you’re in control of the car if you’re in the back seat, you’re not in control. ![]() I think the idiom you are looking for is to take a backseat, which means to be in a position of less importance or a position of not being in control.
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