in one's birthday suit
2
8.6
- idiom
- NSFW
:
en pelotas
- After a long day at the beach, I came home and relaxed in my birthday suit.
Examples
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So what if men like to look at you in your birthday suit.
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He was joking when he said he prefers to work from home in his birthday suit.
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Everybody else is in their birthday suit.
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"It's hard to imagine what that poor girl will find to do in Clayton's house, hanging around in her birthday suit," Molly said.
Fiction book (1995) -
On sunny days, I often lounge in my backyard, happily enjoying the warmth in my birthday suit.
Synonyms
982
1.0
Not wearing any clothes on the body
Completely without clothes, as when someone is born
Completely without clothes like at birth
Completely without clothes like a new baby
A state of having no clothes on
Completely naked
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'completely naked' is not directly derivable from the literal constituents: 'birthday' and 'suit' normally suggest a garment rather than the absence of clothing, so a learner who knows the words is likely to be misled. Only a cultural/metaphorical inference (the 'suit' you were born in = no clothes) yields the idiomatic sense, which is language-specific and not reliably predictable for an average B1 learner.
Etymology
In one's birthday suit comes from a joking image: one popular story says the only 'suit' you had when you were born was nothing, so the words birthday and suit make you picture someone with no clothes. So the phrase means 'completely naked'.