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Gulliver’s Travels vocabulary
2 British vocabulary words
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pillion
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synonyms: bitch seat ???
tags: [britain] [equestrian]
► definition
Definition:a padded seat for a passenger on a horse or motorcycle; the bitch seat
► uses
Uses:
he got a tinker to make a hollow figure of tin, something like the figure of his wife, who was a little woman, which Tom dressed up in his wife's clothes and placed on the pillion behind him on the horse—filled with pottheen: for in those times it was a common custom for the wife to ride behind her husband.
P.W. Joyce. English as we Speak it in Ireland
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the first pregnancy of his wife; he, too, had been very happy the day when he had taken her from her father to his home, and had carried her off on a pillion, trotting through the snow, for it was near Christmas-time, and the country was all white
Gustave Flaubert. Madame Bovary
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female #1: Do you ride motorcycles? I could ride you here.
Michael Portillo: You could?
female #1: I could. So you know what it is to ride on this seat? Do you know what it is called?
Michael Portillo: pillion.
female #1: No, it's called "riding bitch". So you'll be riding as my bitch.
Michael Portillo: [laughs] It's a privilege.
BBC. Great American Railroad Journeys: Milwaukee to Chicago (2017)
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My master, pursuant to the advice of his friend, carried me in a box the next market-day to the neighbouring town, and took along with him his little daughter, my nurse, upon a pillion behind him.
Jonathan Swift. Gulliver's Travels Into Several Remote Regions of the World (1726)
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"Stay here!" Hardenburg shouted, although he was only twelve inches from him. More disorder, Christian thought, resentfully sitting back on the pillion.
Irwin Shaw. The Young Lions, p.257 (1948)
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