Word.ws English Dictionary

back-seat drivers

back-seat drivers is the plural of back-seat driver.

Meaning of back-seat driver

Noun

back-seat driver (plural back-seat drivers)

  1. (dated) An occupant of a large vehicle, such as a firetruck, who helps steer the vehicle from far in the back.
    • When New York pitcher Vernon Gomez retires as a smokeballer he wants to become a smoke eater. Here he gets a tryout as a back-seat driver on a hook and ladder truck at St. Petersburg[…]1914, Daily Kennebec Journal, Augusta, Maine, USA
  2. A person sitting (typically) in the back seat of a car issuing (unsolicited and usually unwanted) instructions to the driver.
    Synonyms:
    nagavator
  3. (figuratively) An opinionated person who offers (unsolicited and often unwanted) advice on the best way to handle a situation.

Questions about back-seat drivers

What is back-seat drivers the plural of?
Back-seat drivers is the plural of back-seat driver.

Words near back-seat drivers in the dictionary

  1. back-scatters
  2. back-seat
  3. back-seat drive
  4. back-seat driven
  5. back-seat driver
  6. back-seat drivers
  7. back-seat drives
  8. back-seat driving
  9. back-seat drove
  10. back-seat game
  11. back-seat gamed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: back-seat drivers (page history and authors); back-seat driver (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “back-seat drivers.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/back-seat_drivers. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.