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take a back seat
Idioms and Phrases
Occupy an inferior position; allow another to be in control. For example, Linda was content to take a back seat and let Nancy run the meeting . This idiom uses back seat in contrast to the driver's seat, that is, the one in control. [Mid-1800s]Example Sentences
The US was supposed to take a back seat in the bombing campaign but was still heavily relied on for logistics - air-to-air refuelling - and providing intelligence and surveillance.
Trade seemed to take a back seat while the new administration pressed ahead on immigration enforcement, pardons of Capitol riot convictions, a fossil-fuel energy policy and federal workforce upheaval - among a range of other disruptive new measures.
“The chatter, often referred to as ‘food noise,’ is something we frequently hear about, but what I have noticed is that other rumination-related behaviors also seem to take a back seat,” said psychotherapist Rachel Goldberg, LMFT, PMH-C.
She tried to address those in her speech as well, even if they seemed to take a back seat to more lofty language and pointed attacks.
Party politics - and inter-party politics - were forced to take a back seat in Better Together, no matter how much tensions bubbled towards the surface.
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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