How to express accidentally sitting on something

Question

その銃は、ダドリーが尻に敷いて銃身をひどく曲げてしまい、...
Dudley sat on the gun and bent the barrel badly ...

Is 尻に敷く normal Japanese for "to sit on something"? I guess it could be from the literal translation of 'spread out on the buttocks'. Is this a standard set phrase or is it as weird as it sounds? When I look in a dictionary all I see is something about dominating one's husband.

The only verb I currently know for sitting is 座る. Would it be natural to say something like つい猫に座ってしまった for 'I accidentally sat on the cat'?

Answer 1

尻に敷く is almost always used in the figurative sense listed in any dictionary. Think of a wife "spreading" her husband under, not on, her buttocks. When it's used in a literal sense, too, the thing is under your buttocks. You can think of things like 座布団. So the translation is not wrong.

As for how to express the idea of accidentally sitting on something, 〜の上に座ってしまった sounds more natural, or more accidental, than 〜に座ってしまった. Combined with つい, your sentence sounds as though you couldn't help sitting on the cat, knowingly. If you want to add the meaning of "without knowing it" to emphasize it was an accident, you can use 知らずに instead of つい.

If you fell on something the buttocks first, you can also say 〜の上に／で尻もちをついた. This もち is 餅. I think the use of the verb つく is from 餅をつく.