in all my born days
- idiom
- Archaic
:
en toda mi vida
- I have never seen anything like it in all my born days.
Examples
-
In all my born days, I have never met anyone as kind as her.
-
He claimed he had never witnessed a storm so fierce in all my born days.
-
I have never seen anything like it in all my born days.
Synonyms
∞
1.0
At any time, often in questions or negative sentences
1
8.9
During a person's whole life
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is compositionally built: 'born days' can be interpreted as the days since one was born, 'all' denotes the whole set, and 'in' places events within that span, yielding 'at any time in my life / ever.' This logic is transparent and cross-linguistically plausible, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words can readily infer the MWE's emphatic meaning despite its slightly archaic flavor.
Etymology
In all my born days comes from the simple image of every day since you were born, with born and days making you picture your whole life. So, it means 'ever' or 'at any time in one's life', often used to show surprise.