Monday-morning quarterback
Monday-morning quarterback noun: someone who criticizes with hindsight.
Noun
Monday-morning quarterback (plural Monday-morning quarterbacks)
- Someone who criticizes with hindsight.
- Yet some Monday-morning quarterbacks also noted that, just as 1960 was the first TV election and 2016 was the first social-media election, the 2024 Presidential campaign was the first to be conducted largely on live streams and long-form podcasts, media that happen to be thoroughly dominated by...2025 March 17, Andrew Marantz, “The Battle for the Bros”, in The New Yorker, →ISSN, archived from the original on 20 Mar 2025
Verb
Monday-morning quarterback (third-person singular simple present Monday-morning quarterbacks, present participle Monday-morning quarterbacking, simple past and past participle Monday-morning quarterbacked)
- To criticize with hindsight.
- Before any show, we "Monday-morning quarterback" the last show. Each man points out his partners' errors, then has to listen to his own.1958 January, Jacksel M. Broughton, “I Led the Thunderbirds”, in Popular Mechanics, volume 109, number 1
- We can Monday-morning quarterback the situation and suggest that the large company should have made a counterchallenge.2004, William A. Cohen, The Art of the Strategist, American Management Association, →ISBN, page 119
Forms of Monday-morning quarterback
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | Monday-morning quarterbacks |
| alternative form | Monday morning quarterback |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | Monday-morning quarterbacks |
| present participle | Monday-morning quarterbacking |
| past participle | Monday-morning quarterbacked |
| past | Monday-morning quarterbacked |
Origin of Monday-morning quarterback
Professional football games in the United States are most often played on Sundays, making Monday a likely day for fans to discuss and critique the performances of teams, in particular that of the quarterback who leads the offence on the field. However, there is evidence that the term actually derived in college football, which is usually played on Saturdays, in which case the use of Monday would also likely be on account of Sunday being the Christian sabbath and a traditional day of rest in the U.S., making it unlikely certain groups with a common interest in the game (such as co-workers) would meet before Monday.
Questions about Monday-morning quarterback
- What does Monday-morning quarterback mean?
- Monday-morning quarterback means someone who criticizes with hindsight.
- What part of speech is Monday-morning quarterback?
- Monday-morning quarterback can be a noun or a verb.
- What is the plural of Monday-morning quarterback?
- The plural of Monday-morning quarterback is Monday-morning quarterbacks.
Words near Monday-morning quarterback in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: Monday-morning quarterback (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-Monday-morning quarterback.ogg.
Cite this entry: “Monday-morning quarterback.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/monday-morning_quarterback. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.