sedan
sedan Lexical Profile
sedan Game Scores & Validity
• noun
North American An enclosed passenger automobile with a permanent roof, typically having four doors, two rows of seats for four or more people, and a separate trunk compartment in the rear.
"The family traded in their two-door sports car for a reliable four-door sedan with plenty of legroom."
An enclosed portable chair for one person, mounted on two horizontal poles and carried by two bearers, one in front and one behind, especially popular in the 17th and 18th centuries.
"Wealthy aristocrats in eighteenth-century London often hired a sedan to cross muddy cobblestone streets without dirtying their clothes."
Word Nuance & Usage
In British English, a four-door passenger car of this style is called a 'saloon' rather than a 'sedan'.
• Rhymes for sedan
• Nearby Words
Word Origin & Etymology
Introduced in the 1630s for an enclosed portable chair, likely derived from southern Italian dialetical derivatives of Latin 'sedes' (meaning 'seat'), though historically conjectured to be named after the French city of Sedan.