booster seat

English

A stack of booster seats at a movie theater in Nelsonville, Ohio, USA

Noun

booster seat (plural booster seats)

1. A small seat placed upon standard seating, particularly to enable children to eat at a table or (automotive) to allow safer use of regular seat belts.
   • 2021 January 13, Stephen Joseph Dubner, “How Much Do We Really Care about Children?”, in Freakonomics Radio, Episode 447:

     DUBNER: Now, the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, some officials there, after we published these findings in the New York Times, wrote a letter to the editor, and it said, "Our research consistently shows that child safety seats and booster seats significantly lower the risk of serious injury compared to seatbelts alone." They go on to say that your recommendations to rethink car-seat laws are "irresponsible and dangerous"...
     LEVITT: I think what's irresponsible and dangerous is accepting mediocrity, accepting our existing solutions as if they are the best solution. What I take away from the research is we've put in all of these laws about child car seats and we've built these contraptions but then when you look at the data, they're really not doing better, certainly not much better, than this other invention, which never had kids in mind and shouldn't work at all.

Synonyms

• booster chair

Coordinate terms

• highchair (eating); see child safety seat (riding)