Meaning of in the saddle | Babel Free

Definitions

1. Synonym of in control.
   idiomatic
2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: sitting in or on the saddle of a horse or of a motorcycle or bicycle.

Examples

“1990, December 28 broadcast⟳, PBS Newshour, David Gergen the pessimism […] in this country was in the saddle even before Saddam Hussein came along”

“Once or twice a year, I travelled through France with the dedicatee of this book [Margaret Hambrick, the author's wife] at the speed⟳ of a nineteenth-century stagecoach. Cycling not only makes it possible to conduct exhaustive research⟳ into local produce⟳, it also creates an enormous appetite for information. Certain configurations of field, road, weather and smell⟳ imprint themselves on the cycling brain with inexplicable clarity and return⟳ sometimes years later to pose their nebulous questions. A bicycle unrolls a 360-degree panorama […] This book is the result⟳ of fourteen thousand miles in the saddle and four years in the library. It describes the lives of the inhabitants of France – wherever possible, through their own⟳ eyes – and the exploration and colonization of their land⟳ by foreigners and natives, from the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth. It follows a roughly chronological route, from the end⟳ of the reign of Louis XIV to the outbreak of the First World War, with occasional detours through pre-Roman Gaul and present-day France.”

CEFR level