podestrian

English

Etymology

Blend of pod +‎ pedestrian

Noun

podestrian (plural podestrians)

  1. (slang) A pedestrian who listens to music (in particular, using an iPod) while walking and thus has lessened situational awareness.
    • 2010 January 26, Michael Hviid Jacobsen, The Contemporary Goffman (Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought)‎[1], Routledge, →ISBN, Enter Podestrians:
      Some Londoners have a death wish. Every day I slam on the bike brakes to avoid ploughing into people blissfully unaware of traffic thanks to their iPods ... Podestrians, as they've been labeled, wander blindly into moving traffic, smiling happily to Neil diamond.
    • 2010 March 20, Nigel Farndale, “Explaining a Darwin Award death”, in The Daily Telegraph‎[2]:
      Because he was listening to his iPod, he didn’t hear the approaching light aircraft as it made an emergency landing … Two thoughts strike me about this unfortunate incident. The first is that I can see how it might have happened. “Podestrians”, as they are known to the emergency services, now account for one in 10 of all minor accidents involving the sudden braking of cars or bikes.
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.