in your birthday suit
- idiom
- NSFW
- Don't walk around in your birthday suit in public!
Examples
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He answered the door in his birthday suit, shocking the delivery driver.
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Caught in the hallway in her birthday suit, she quickly grabbed a towel to cover up.
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After the swim, the children ran around the locker room in their birthday suits.
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He loves to swim in his birthday suit during the summer.
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After the swim, the children ran around the locker room in their birthday suits.
-
Caught in the hallway in her birthday suit, she quickly grabbed a towel to cover up.
-
He answered the door in his birthday suit, shocking the delivery driver.
Synonyms
Not wearing any clothes on the body
Not wearing any clothes
Not wearing any clothes
Completely without clothes like when you were born
Completely without clothes like at birth
Completely without clothes, as when someone is born
Completely without clothes like a new baby
A state of having no clothes on
Antonyms
How Dressed
- NSFW
- NSFW
Surface Forms
Morphology
Although the individual words ('birthday' + 'suit') literally suggest an item of clothing, the idiomatic meaning 'completely naked' is the opposite of that compositional sense and cannot be predicted from the parts. This ironic, conventionalized usage is language-specific and not transparently derivable, so a B1 learner who knows the words is unlikely to infer the correct meaning without prior exposure.
Etymology
In your birthday suit comes from a joking idea that the birthday suit is the clothes you had when you were born, which is nothing. So, saying someone is in their birthday suit means they are 'completely naked'.