born in a barn
- idiom
- Offensive
:
nacer en un establo
- Close the door! Were you born in a barn?
Examples
-
He never wipes his feet; it's like he was born in a barn.
-
Are you born in a barn? Shut the fridge door properly, please.
-
Whenever you leave the door open, your mother asks if you were born in a barn.
-
Were you born in a barn?
-
Whenever you leave the door open, it feels like you were born in a barn.
-
Don't let the heat escape; do you think you were born in a barn?
-
She said, 'Were you born in a barn? You're leaving the door wide open again!'
Synonyms
To act rudely as if they had no manners
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
A learner who knows 'born', 'in', and 'barn' can plausibly infer a sense of rural or rough upbringing and thus a suggestion of coarse manners, so part of the meaning is derivable from the constituents. However, the conventional rhetorical use (a rebuke about poor manners or leaving doors open) and its pragmatic force are culturally conditioned and not fully predictable from the literal words, making the phrase only partially transparent.
Etymology
Born in a barn comes from the picture of a baby born in a farm barn, where doors are often left open and people are less tidy. So people use it to ask if someone is 'careless' or has 'poor manners', especially when they leave doors open.