When we were kids, each of us wanted to sit in the front seat of the car, next to the driver. The traditional way of getting access to this seat so you didn’t have to sit in the back seat was to call shotgun before anyone else could. Shotgun, we’d shout. Then, once we were in the front passenger seat, it meant we were riding shotgun. Where did this expression come from?
Origin of Riding Shotgun
The idiom phrase riding shotgun came from stagecoaches in the old west, although stagecoaches were not invented there. The stagecoach is a traditional theme of western movies. In the films, these coaches were often robbed by bandits, so-called highwaymen, or road agents. The coaches carried wealthy, or at least well-to-do passengers and often valuable items.
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What Were Stagecoaches?
A stagecoach was kind of a long-distance taxi. They were four-wheeled carriages or wagons that carried passengers and cargo. They traveled along established routes and made scheduled stops. These stops, or stages, were where the horses that pulled the stagecoach were changed for fresh horses. Stagecoaches and trains would often carry shotgun messengers which were more officially called express messengers. These were basically armed guards.
Express Messengers Rode Shotgun and Protected the Stagecoach
On the stagecoach, the express messenger sat to the left of the driver. Despite what we might assume, and what some western movies indicate, they weren’t there to protect the passengers but to protect any valuable cargo that might also be being transported by the coach. These valuables would be kept in a strongbox.
Ironically, then, the fact that a stagecoach had a shotgun messenger made it more likely to be a target, as this indicated that it carried valuable cargo. Of course, this was certainly no guarantee that a coach without a guard was safe as it was certainly an easier target.
Disappointingly, even though the old west stagecoach is the origin of our modern idiom riding shotgun, this idiom may not have been actually used at the time. It first appears in print in 1905 in a fictional book about the old west by Alred Henry Lewis, The Sunset Trail which featured, unsurprisingly, Wyat and Morgan Earp:
Wyatt and Morgan Earp were in the service of the Express Company. They went often as guards – “riding shotgun” it was called – when the stage bore unusual treasure.
Although we can’t be sure, it appears the phrase riding shotgun was a later fictional invention.
Gunsmoke TV Show
Calling shotgun didn’t arise until the automobile was very common, in 1954, coinciding with the TV series Gunsmoke, an immensely popular and long-running western show often featuring stagecoaches and guards who were ‘riding shotgun.’
More Etymology
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