seat
/siːt
/noun
1A thing made or used for sitting on, such as a chair or stool.I sat down in the white chair while Dr. Clark took a seat on a stool that sat to my left....
- The stone furniture includes cupboards, beds and seats.
- Benches are more flexible than stools or individual seats because you can squeeze in more people along them.
Synonyms
chair, place, space;
(seats) seating, seating accommodation, room
1.1The roughly horizontal part of a chair, on which one’s weight rests directly.The package Campbell had brought the night before rested unassumingly on the seat of my chair....
- Artemis sat on top of the back of a chair, his bare feet resting on the seat.
- Invariably they have cushioned seats and foot rests.
1.2A sitting place for a passenger in a vehicle or for a member of an audience: a fairly small theatre with 1,300 seats...
- Some audience members took their seats more than 30 minutes ago.
- He has removed reclining seats, so now passengers have to endure the whole flight sitting up straight.
- In that case the seating available for passengers comprised three single seats and a bench seat 7 ft 4 ins in length.
2A person’s buttocks.They tossed beach balls to one another between the decks and nibbled on cucumber sandwiches as they shook sand from the towels covering their seats.
Synonyms
buttocks, behind, backside, rear, rear end, rump, haunches, hindquarters, cheeks;
British bottom;
French derrière;
German Sitzfleisch
informal sit-upon, stern, BTM, tochus, rusty dusty
British informal bum, botty, prat, jacksie
Scottish informal bahookie
North American informal butt, fanny, tush, tushie, tail, duff, buns, booty, caboose, heinie, patootie, keister, tuchis, bazoo, bippy
West Indian informal batty, rass
humorous fundament, posterior
British vulgar slang arse, clunge
North American vulgar slang ass
technical nates
archaic breech
2.1The part of a garment that covers the buttocks.As she was doing this, the instructor worked her tail through a hole in the seat of the garment....
- And for extra room in the seat, try jeans with a low waist, low pockets and a bit of a flare around the ankle.
- The girl sighed at the dark stain that covered the seat of her pants.
2.2A manner of sitting on a horse: he’s got the worst seat on a horse of anyone I’ve ever seen...
- Waging war with such tools required more than courage, common sense, and a firm seat on a horse.
- At the same time she will correct your position on the horse, your seat, your hand and legs.
- If your seat is quiet, the horse is more likely to relax and slow his pace.
3A place in an elected legislative or other body: he lost his seat in the 1997 election...
- Of all state legislative seats nationwide, Republicans had won or were leading in 3,647, Democrats in 3,630.
- In all, there were 153 congressional and state legislative seats in play in California last November.
- Only half of the 60 seats in the Legislative Council, the lawmaking body, are elected directly.
Synonyms
residence, ancestral home, mansion, stately home, abode
3.1British A parliamentary constituency: a safe Labour seat in the North-East...
- In 1945 he won the safe Tory parliamentary seat of Chislehurst for Labour.
- When he was 21, his father bought him a parliamentary seat for the Irish borough of Cashel.
- We will be standing in all 59 parliamentary seats across Scotland.
4A principal site or location: Parliament House was the seat of the Scots Parliament until the Union with England...
- The beck breaks to the surface at the site of the former seat of the city's textile industry.
- He regarded it as the principal seat of the soul and the place in which all our thoughts are formed.
- Strasbourg is a central seat of administration for them, that's right, just as it is for the European Commission.
Synonyms
headquarters, location, site, whereabouts, place, base, centre, nerve centre, nucleus, centre of operations/activity, hub, focus, focal point, heart
4.1British short for country seat. Lamport Hall was the seat of the Isham family for over 400 years...
- Her brother and mother have sent her to the Castlewood seat in the country; to be away from the attentions of the Prince.
- Kilkenny castle was built in the 12th century and was the principal seat of the Butlers until 1935.
5A part of a machine that supports or guides another part: if the valve seat is damaged, it can be recut using a special tool
verb [with object]
1Arrange for (someone) to sit somewhere: Owen seated his guests in the draughty baronial hall...
- They seated the audience on a hillside and the action of the play took place in a grassy circle.
- One of McRae's other decisions is to seat the audience on both sides of the long, narrow stage, one section facing the other.
- Where else would he seat his guests for his famous five-course suppers?
Synonyms
position, put, place, stand, station;
install, settle, arrange, dispose, array, range, deploy
informal plonk, park
rare posit
1.1 (seat oneself or be seated) Sit down: she invited them to be seated (as adjective seated) a dummy in a seated position...
- Start by seating yourself in a comfortable position in a quiet area.
- Rising slightly from his awkward position, he seated himself wearily on the bed, then pulled her down next to him.
- Sighing, she seated herself in her usual position in the Geography class and prepared herself for a long day.
1.2(Of a vehicle or building) have seats for (a specified number of people): the jet seats up to 175 passengers...
- (By the way, the theatre seats three hundred and fifteen or six hundred and thirty over two nights).
- But estate cars usually seat just five, and this good-looking car seats seven.
- Business needs are well-catered for with seven meeting rooms and four theatres seating a maximum of 1340 people.
Synonyms
have room for, contain, take, sit, hold, accommodate
2 [with object and adverbial of place] Fit in position: upper boulders were simply seated in the interstices below...
- It would be unwise to assume that this test proves that you can get better pistol accuracy by simply seating the bullet out further.
- She flipped the second safety off before seating it in the holster and stood up.
- When installed properly, your Toyota hubcaps should be evenly seated around the edge of the wheel.
Phrases
take one's seat
Derivatives
seatless
- The party has three seats out of 47 in greater Dublin, is much reduced in Cork and is seatless in several rural areas.
- This means that, ultimately, the new Verso cannot become a seatless, low-floored delivery van in the way the old one could.
- Each Spartan cell has a seatless toilet, a small sink and metal bed bolted into the wall.
Origin
Middle English (as a noun): from Old Norse sæti, from the Germanic base of sit. The verb dates from the late 16th century.
An old Scandinavian word which goes back even further to the same source as Latin sedere ‘to sit’. The Latin word is also the origin of sedentary (late 16th century), sedative (Late Middle English), and sediment (mid 16th century), and from its past tense session (Late Middle English) literally an act of sitting, so settling down to deal with something. The sense ‘a place where a government is based’, as in seat of government or power, comes from the throne or ‘seat’ of a king or governor. American pilots in the 1940s were the first to use by the seat of the pants, meaning that they flew the plane using their instinct and experience rather than relying on the aircraft's instrument panel. An experienced pilot could tell by a change in the vibrations of the seat if, for example, the plane was about to stall, and so take early action to rescue the situation.