Phraseology and Culture in English

8. “Mondayitis” 
The following dialogue took place one Saturday in June or July 2001, just 
before 1 pm, in a CD shop near the University of Tasmania’s Sandy Bay 
campus. The salesman whom I was talking to was in a hurry to go home, 
there were no other customers, and the business would be closed for the 
rest of the weekend. “I’m also looking for something by a guy whose name 
is Eddie Thunder Stealer. He’s got something called ‘Mondayitis’”, I told 
him. The salesman kept on browsing through the title lists he had available 
to him, still looking for another title I had put to him moments earlier. His 
reply, however, was instantaneous. Without looking up, he said: “Don’t we 
all?” Of course, he had understood that I was looking for a song called 
“Mondayitis”. But I had been slightly clumsy in my choice of words, and 
he had seized the moment to play on words. He had immediately recog-

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Bert Peeters
nised the term, which appears to be much more widely used in Australia 
than anywhere else, and he had replied knowingly.
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Morphologically, the word Mondayitis consists of a root referring to the 
first day of the week, and a suffix -itis, also found in words such as bron-
chitis and appendicitis. Unlike its learned counterparts, it doesn’t denote a 
physical condition but a mental one. The Macquarie Dictionary of Austra-
lian Colloquial Language (Delbridge 1988) describes Mondayitis as a form 
of ‘lassitude and general reluctance to work as is often experienced on Mon-
days’. The Penguin Book of Australian Slang (Johansen 1996) and the Aus-
tralian Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English (Moore 1997) talk 
about a fictitious disease, the former towards the end of its definition (‘gen-
eral lack of desire to go to work, often experienced on Monday after the 
weekend break; a fictitious illness due to this’), the latter towards the start 
(‘a fictitious disease, the chief symptom of which is a marked reluctance to 
resume work after the weekend break’). “Sick or not, we just can’t shake 
the Mondayitis”, titles the Sydney Morning Herald (10 February 2003, 
article by Sherrill Nixon reporting on absenteeism in call centres). Monday-
itis is something that, after “the weekend euphoria”, “we all occasionally 
(more frequently for some) catch a dose of” (Jasch 1997: 4). As a result, 
one works less well on Mondays – unless one chooses not to work at all. In 
a poem called Mondayitis, Australian poet and high school teacher Kerry 
Scuffins relates her fear of getting stuck in mid-sentence in front of a class-
room on a Monday morning (Scuffins 1995: 78); to avoid the problem, a 
“sickie” (see Section 2.2) appears to be called for... 
But what if the condition lingers, as it sometimes does? According to 
the Dinkum Dictionary of Aussie English (Antill-Rose 1990), this is the 
rule: Mondayitis is ‘how the hard working average Australian feels about 
going to work any day of the week’. On the other hand, “‘Mondayitis’, 
seven days a week” is the way Chung (1995), addressing an audience of 
lawyers, describes the well-known condition commonly referred to as “burn-
out”; one of the early symptoms is “Mondayitis occurring on Sunday night”. 
Another comparison that has been made is with a phenomenon called 
“January Blues”, experienced at the year’s start and defined as ‘a sort of 
overblown lengthy version of Mondayitis’ (Harry Wiegele, “a special od-
yssey”, Perth Clinic Newsletter, February 2002). 
It is relatively easy to get over a bout of Mondayitis, even though some 
instances are particularly aggressive, and therefore harder to overcome. In 
that respect, it may be useful to quote the Sydney Morning Herald of 30 
September 2000, the day before the Sydney Olympics closing ceremony. In 

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Australian perceptions of the weekend
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an article titled “Mondayitis? You ain’t seen nothing yet”, Sue Williams 
warned her readers against “the worst case of Mondayitis since they in-
vented the weekend”. As a giant party had been planned, rather than to give 
in to nostalgic reflections from as early as the last day of the Games, the 
risk of what Williams called “a wave of post-games blues” setting in the 
day after, viz. on Monday, 2 October, was extremely high. Even the foreign 
press talked about it. Uli Schmetzer (The Chicago Tribune, 2 October) sig-
nalled the existence of a virus “known here as Mondayitis”. “Have you ever 
heard of ‘Mondayitis’?” asked, the same day, in a report titled “‘Monday-
itis’ set to hit Sydneysiders”, The Tribune, a newspaper published in Chandi-
garh (India).
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Not that there wasn’t a cure. According to the Sydney Morn-
ing Herald, psychiatrists recommended focussing “on the next party, the 
centenary on January 1 when the country celebrates 100 years of federa-
tion, the birth of its nation”. Other cures that have been suggested over the 
years, without reference to the Olympics, include cycling and singing. The 
Illawarra Touring Cycle Club (New South Wales) offers cycling trips 
called The cure for Mondayitis. “Need a cure for Mondayitis?” asks Syd-
ney’s Macquarie University Staff News in at least two different issues (22 
March 2002, 7 March 2003). Answer: “Join the Macquarie University Sing-
ers!”. Finally, there is a radio programme called Mondayitis, on Sydney’s 
2RSR-FM, every Monday morning, between 6 and 9 am; and, in Aspley 
(Queensland), a bowling championship called the Mondayitis Tenpin Bowl-
ing League.
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