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take a back seat
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
Dunkley, who made a career-best 81 in the first match, was able to take a back seat and rotate the strike for her captain at the other end as England cantered to victory with 64 balls to spare.
As age has hit, he's had to take a back seat to the more recent crop of achievers - Liel Abada, Jota, Daizen Maeda, Nicolas Gerrit-Kuhn.
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.
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