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1) Ride shotgun (sit in the seat next to the driver)

a. This comes from the Wild West where the person who sat next to the driver carried a shotgun.

b. This was so he could shoot anyone trying to rob the coach.

Hi, everyone. And welcome back to the segment called It Means What?  

Yoho~

Now that's new. Hi, 安澜.

Hi, Lulu, hi, everyone.

欢迎大家回来【词源考古研究所】. So in this segment, we're going to explore the interesting origin of words and phrases. 安澜, actually, can I propose the word or the phrase for today?

Yeah, why not?

Because I always ask you what do we have for today? There's one thing and I'm sure a lot of our audience would share my confusion, which is, you know that a lot of times you watch like especially American TV show, you have these kids or really immature adults when they jump into the seat next to the driver they would say “I call shotgun”. 不知道大家在美剧里面有没有看过, 我不知道英国人会不会这么说.

 We understand it, but we don't say anything.

It’s an American thing. 对, 看美剧的时候, 就有很多小朋友或者那种心智不太成熟的成年人, 他们会跳到副驾的位置, 然后就说 I call shotgun, 你看到底下的字幕翻译一般都是说 “我抢了副驾的位置, 我抢了”。

I always wondered sitting next to the driver, what does that have to do with shotgun which is a weapon.

Yes. Ride shotgun or sit up front is sitting in the seat next to the driver.  It actually comes from the Wild West.

The Wild West, is it like the all of those western movies? Exactly.

 When you had cowboys and America was expanding west. 

就是美国西部那种西部片, 也是like you draw your gun and shoot at each other, cowboys, that sort of thing.

The whole idea that it was a lawless environment. There are not many people, there was lots of fights, cowboys, bandits.

So back then apparently the person who sat next to the driver in a stagecoach carried a shotgun.

Hang on, what is the stagecoach?

A stagecoach is a horse carriage, but it's almost like public transport, so it goes a set route. It's normally covered and it is used for post and also for carrying passengers.

It's kind of like the horse drawn version of a bus.

Just the smaller version of it.

Mini bus.  A horse drawn version of minibus. Exactly.

So it's called a stagecoach because it used to travel different stages of the journey.

公共马车那种感觉.

So the person who sat next to the driver carried a shotgun. So he could shoot anyone who tried to rob the coach.

So it’s kind of like a bodyguard.

Almost like a bodyguard, because also there were attacks from bandits. They were also attacks from wild animals.

If we believe in any of these Wild West movies, it's really like you said, it was a lawless place.

Everyone was shooting each other really wild. So that's why they say ride shotgun because the person who sat next to the driver had to carry a shotgun to protect the driver.

You know what this reminds me of, when we were doing China Story, the course, you remember when we were talking about swordsman, talking about Chinese martial arts, say these kung fu masters, they would become like armed escorts.

Yeah, it's the same idea.

Exactly the same idea有点.

像我们押镖的那种人一样.

And then they have this shotgun and they were just protecting the coach.