Word.ws English Dictionary

be born yesterday

be born yesterday verb: to be new, naive, innocent, inexperienced, or easily deceived.

Verb

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

  1. (informal, no-past-participle, no-present-participle, stative) To be new, naive, innocent, inexperienced, or easily deceived.
    • I was not born yesterday, you know. I have done this before!
    • "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."1840, Henry Cockton, chapter 60, in The Life and Adventures of Valentine Vox, the Ventriloquist, page 508

Synonyms of be born yesterday

Forms of be born yesterday

third-person singular presentis born yesterday
pastwas born yesterday

Questions about be born yesterday

What does be born yesterday mean?
Be born yesterday means to be new, naive, innocent, inexperienced, or easily deceived.
What part of speech is be born yesterday?
Be born yesterday is a verb.
What is the past tense of be born yesterday?
The past tense of be born yesterday is was born yesterday.

Words near be born yesterday in the dictionary

  1. be based on
  2. be big on
  3. be bored
  4. be born
  5. be born last week
  6. be born yesterday
  7. be bothered
  8. be called
  9. be careful
  10. be careful what you wish for
  11. be cool

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: be born yesterday (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-be born yesterday.wav.

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