Phraseology and Culture in English

9. “That Monday (morning) feeling”
“Sunday night is the eve of the working week and the time, it seems, when 
people start to get wound up about the week that lies ahead – the true onset, 
if you like, of that Monday morning feeling”. It is not an Australian who is 
talking: these are the words of the spokesperson of a British website, quoted 
in the Sydney Morning Herald of 30 July 2001. The phrase to be noted is of 
course that Monday (morning) feeling; it is not very widespread in Austra-
lia, probably because of the very clear Australian preference for the word 
Mondayitis, which is shorter and therefore, presumably, more expressive 
(in the same way that sickie is more expressive than sick leave). Although 
the Australian word is spreading to other varieties of English, speakers of 
English worldwide tend to use that Monday feeling, or the longer that
Monday morning feeling. The latter, without its demonstrative that, which 

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 Bert 
Peeters
is however crucial, as none of a, the or this Monday (morning) feeling exist, 
is defined in the Cambridge International Dictionary of English (2001) as 
“the way people feel after the weekend when they do not want to go to 
work or school”. The word Mondayitis is added in brackets, preceded by 
the abbreviation Aus.
Without going into detail, let’s simply point out that, in Australian Eng-
lish, the word and the phrase are sometimes used together. The phrase, in 
one of its variants, appears in the title of an article or a text, and the word in 
the body. Thus, one of pastor Chris Appleby’s (of the Anglican parish St 
Theodore Wattle Park, in Surrey Hills, New South Wales) sermons is titled 
“That Monday morning feeling”, and starts off as follows: 
I trust you all know the old adage that if you are buying a car, make sure it 
is not a Monday car. In fact, they say the best cars to buy are Wednesday 
cars. Monday cars are the worst because of that endemic malady, “Monday-
itis”. It seems that most people have a problem moving from the relaxation 
of the weekend back to work on a Monday. Researchers have found that 
stress levels are always higher on a Monday. You are more likely to have a 
heart attack on a Monday than on any other day of the week, your blood 
pressure will be higher on a Monday, your stomach acidity is higher, so you 
are more likely to develop an ulcer and the probability of suicide is higher. 
Sounds like a good reason to have tomorrow off, doesn’t it? Except that 
that just puts the problem back to Tuesday.
In all likelihood, pastor Appleby used the same source for his sermon of 
Sunday, 18 November 2001, as Victoria Button, who in an article of The Age
(published on 16 February 2000) refers to the same risks (stress, heart at-
tack, etc.), while quoting Gavin Lambert, a researcher at the Baker Medical 
Research Institute (Melbourne) who refers to “the old idea of Mondayitis 
where it’s hard to get up on Monday, hard if you’ve had a hard weekend or 
even if you’ve had a restful weekend”. The article in The Age is titled “That 
Monday feeling: it’s a killer, researchers say”.
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