Curmudgeons' Corner

I was driving home in the frontseat of my car the other day. I pulled into the driveway, which goes through the frontyard. After parking my vehicle, I picked up the newspaper and entered the frontroom of my house. When I looked at the paper, I saw on its frontpage several articles: one about Colorado’s backcountry, another about politicians meeting in backrooms, and another about a car accident in which the backseat was crushed. ARRGGHH!

Backseat driver, where backseat is a modifier and pronounced with the stronger accent on the first syllable, is good. “Sitting in the backseat”, where backseat is meant to be a stand-alone noun with the accent on the second syllable, is, well, backward. Please, folks, use back seat in this case. And back off the other joined-together backs, too!