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Born yesterday

Idiomatic Phrase
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Naïve, gullible, or inexperienced; easily deceived because of a lack of knowledge or worldly wisdom.

Detailed Definition
This idiom, usually used in the negative ("I wasn't born yesterday"), marks the line between naivety and experience, innocence and knowledge. In poetry, it appears in coming-of-age narratives, satirical verse, and dramatic monologues where a speaker asserts hard-won wisdom or mocks another's credulity. Poets also deploy it to celebrate innocence, mourning the education that strips it away. Its temporal logic—being new to the world—connects to broader themes of origin, maturation, and the cost of experience in the lyric tradition. The phrase resonates in any poem interrogating what we lose when we learn to read the world's deceptions as fluently as its beauties.
Example
Example in poetry:
A dramatic monologue spoken by a con artist's victim might end with the rueful declaration: I wasn't born yesterday — said too late, the wisdom arriving after the education it should have prevented; A coming-of-age poem might trace the speaker's passage from the born-yesterday innocence of childhood to the battered knowledge of experience, mourning the loss while acknowledging its necessity; In a satirical poem about political credulity, the electorate is described as born yesterday — willing to believe the same promises that have been broken in each preceding generation; The phrase suits poems about grief's strange innocence — the way catastrophic loss makes the bereaved newly naïve, born yesterday into a world they thought they knew; A love poem might celebrate a version of born yesterday — the deliberate, chosen innocence of the lover who decides to trust again despite all evidence that trust is dangerous; In a poem about a child's questions, the parent reflects that to answer honestly would be to end the born-yesterday quality of the child's vision — and the poem becomes a meditation on what is lost in the gaining of knowledge
Additional Notes
This idiom means naïve rather than literally young. In poetry, it can be used as a rebuke from one speaker to another: “Do you think I was born yesterday?” It is useful in dramatic monologues where innocence and experience clash. The phrase relates to worldliness, deception, apprenticeship, and the loss of protective ignorance.
Also Known As
Green Naïve Wet behind the ears
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