[Ads-l] Plate Glass Skip - like Monday Morning Quarterback

[Peter Reitan]

We've discussed "Monday Morning Quarterback" here before.  Ben Zimmer 
wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal last year, and I've posted 
twice about it on my blog.

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2016-December/145513.html

My first post was about the earliest use of "Monday Morning Quarterback" 
in 1931.

My second post was about all sorts of predecessor idioms, including 
"Grandstand Quarterback," "Cigar Store Quarterback," "Sunday Morning 
Quarterback," and "Drugstore Quarterback," as well as numerous later 
variants including "Radio," "TV," "Living Room," and "Drugstore."

In a post here and in his column, Ben Zimmer noted similarities with 
earlier idioms like "Armchair critic/strategist/general" and "Armchair 
warriors."

I recently stumbled across "Plate Glass Skip," three decades earlier 
than MMQ, which led me to uncover a whole slough of earlier 
second-guessing and similar idioms.  The earliest I found was "arm-chair 
politician" (1820).  Later examples included combinations and iterations 
of places from which someone was second guessed (armchairs, easy chairs, 
crossroads, curbstones, soap boxes, cracker barrels and the plate glass 
at a curling rink) and people being second guessed (politicians, 
generals, soldiers, managers, umpires, coaches, quarterbacks and the 
skip on a curling team).

Plate glass skip was mentioned as early as 1903, in an account of a tour 
by Scottish curlers through Canada.  The latest example I've seen in 
print was as recently as 2006.

[Excerpt] Edinburgh, Scotsman. “Plate-glass skips” is a phrase with 
which the Scottish curlers have become familiar in their progress 
through Canada.  These are the curling equivalents of arm-chair 
politicians.  When the matches are being played in the covered rinks out 
here these gentlemen seat themselves in the comfortable parlors which 
overlook the rinks, and are protected from the cold by plate-glass 
fronts.[End Excerpt]

Ottawa Journal (Ottawa, Canada), March 14, 1903, page 17.

I've posted a draft post about the various combinations and iterations, 
with tangents into  the history of cracker barrels, "hot stove" baseball 
leagues and soap boxes.

https://esnpc.blogspot.com/2020/09/cracker-barrels-hot-stoves-and-soap.html

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