be born yesterday

English

Verb

be born yesterday (no third-person singular simple present, no present participle, simple past was born yesterday, no past participle)

1. (informal, stative, chiefly in the negative) To be new, naive, innocent, inexperienced, or easily deceived.

   Synonym: (US) fall off the turnip truck

   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, 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.

Synonyms

• be born last week
• come down in the last shower (NZ, Australian)
• born at night but not last night
• See Thesaurus:naive

Translations

to be inexperienced

• Dutch: van gisteren zijn
• Finnish: olla märkäkorva, olla eilisen teeren poika
• French: ne pas être né de la dernière pluie (fr)
• German: von gestern sein
• Hungarian: most jött le a falvédőről, most jött a hathúszassal
• Italian: essere nato ieri
• Polish: spaść z księżyca (literally “fall down from the Moon”)
• Portuguese: ser nascido ontem m
• Russian: вчера́ роди́лся (včerá rodílsja)
• Scottish Gaelic: cha b' ann an-diugh no an-dè a rugadh mise (literally “it wasn't today or yesterday that I was born”)
• Spanish: haber nacido ayer, nacer ayer, caerse de un guindo, caerse del nido, 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