Hey Chris,
Do we remember books? Indeed we do! I have one holding up the front of
my computer monitor even as we speak...
Ah! Dickey! That's a dicey question...
Sorry, but once again you lot are blaming a corruption on the colonies
that really originates with your ownselfs (that one, I grant you, is
ours).
"Dickey seats" are found over here rarely if at all. We have "jump
seats," you guys have "dickey seats." It appears that you lot used to
call the driver's seat in a carriage a "dickey seat." I suspect that at
some time or other the King or Queen or some Duke or something issued an
edict that all coachmen were to be, henceforth, named "Dickey" so that
the upper classes wouldn't be troubled with learning large numbers of
names.
"Yo! Dickey! What, ho?" is ever so much simpler than "Yo! Mr. Carriage
Driver, could you give me ride? What, ho?"
I figure you lot started calling "jump seats" (so named because they
operate the same way parachutists' jump seats work... NOT) because some
carriage driver once sat in one of the folding seats in an auto and it
became another instant tradition... "Mustn't sit in that seat, it's
Dickey's, donchaknow?"
It is also possible they are so called because they resemble carriage
driver's seats, particularly the driver's seat on a hansom cab.
Over here the term "jump seats" dates to 1864 when the term was applied
to folding carriage seats. The current meaning of the term is "a folding
seat between the front and rear seats of a passenger automobile."
Cheers!
--Colin Cobb, Las Cruces, NM, USA
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