Bodkin

To ride bodkin. To ride in a carriage between two others, the accommodation being only for two.

⁂ Dr. Payne says that bodkin in this sense is a contraction of bodykin, a little body, which may be squeezed into a small space.

“If you can bodkin the sweet creature into the coach.”—Gibbon.

“There is hardly room between Jos and Miss Sharp, who are on the front seat, Mr. Osborne sitting bodkin opposite, between Captain Dobbin and Amelia.”—Thackeray: Vanity Fair.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.