be born yesterday

English

Etymology

be + born + yesterday

Verb

be born yesterday (past tense only)

1. (informal) To be new, naive, innocent, inexperienced, or easily deceived.

   I was not born yesterday, you know. I have done this before!

   • 1840, Henry Cockton, chapter 60, in The Life and Adventures of Valentine Vox, the Ventriloquist, page 508:

     "Do you think," he added, with an ironical grin, "that you'll go for to gammon me into that air! I'm hinnocent, I know, but I wasn't born yesterday exactly."

   • 1915, William MacLeod Raine, chapter 6, in Steve Yeager:

     "Say, do I look like I was born yesterday? See any green in my eye, Cactus Center?"

   • 1998, Gwyn Hyman Rubio, Icy Sparks‎, page 155:

     "Compared to me, you were born yesterday."

   • 2005, Howard Zinn and Donaldo Pereira Macedo, Howard Zinn on Democratic Education‎, page 69:

     If you don't know important things about history, then it's as if you were born yesterday.

Usage notes

• Mostly used in the negative to indicate that one is not as naive as had been implied, but sometimes in an affirmative form, as in most of the quotations above.

Synonyms

• See Thesaurus:naive
• come down in the last shower (NZ, Australian)

Translations

to be inexperienced

• Dutch: van gisteren zijn
• Finnish: olla märkäkorva
• French: ne pas être né de la dernière pluie (fr)
• German: von gestern sein (de)
• Hungarian: most jött le a falvédőről, most jött a hathúszassal
• Italian: essere nato ieri
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• Polish: spaść z księżyca (fall down from the Moon)
• Portuguese: ser (pt) nascido ontem m
• Russian: вчера́ роди́лся (včerá rodílsja) (Example: Я не вчера родился)
• Spanish: haber (es) nacido (es) ayer (es), nacer (es) ayer (es), no haberse caído del guindo, chuparse el dedo
• Swedish: vara (sv) född igår

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

Translations to be checked‌: "naive"

• Norwegian: ^{(please verify)} født i går
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}