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quarterback

nounverbcommon in dialogue

  • //ˈkwɔːtəbak//

An offensive back whose primary job is to pass the ball in a play.

noun

  1. 1

    An offensive back whose primary job is to pass the ball in a play.

    Standing 6-foot-6, 237 pounds, Herbert’s size and arm strength are consistent with a prototypical N.F.L. quarterback, and he led the Ducks to a Pac-12 championship and a victory at the Rose Bowl in January with not much talent at receiver.

  2. 2

    historicalAn offensive back who receives the snap (hike) and then blocks the defense from crossing the line of scrimmage; a blocking back.

  3. 3

    historicalA position just behind the forwards, or one who plays this position.

Etymology

From quarter + back, in reference to the position in front of the halfback position.

verb

  1. 1

    To play the position of quarterback.

  2. 2

    figurativeTo lead a team or group; to be primarily responsible for some group project or activity.

    Wayman's major responsibility is to quarterback the team, coordinating business development, project scheduling and management and quality control.

Forms

plural
quarterbacks
past tense
quarterbacked
past participle
quarterbacked
present participle
quarterbacking
third person singular
quarterbacks
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).