born tired

English

Adjective

born tired (not comparable)

1. Chronically tired; asthenic.
   • 1909, Michigan State Farmers' Institutes, page 203:

     God creates the human family, but the mother is the instrument of creation and the child of the tired mother will always be born tired, and there is nothing so pitiful as the child born tired.

   • 1926, Max Seham, The Tired Child, page 169:

     To the latter reference has been made so repeatedly that it will suffice here to say that the asthenic child is “born tired".

   • 1996, Hereward Carrington, The Hygienic Way of Life:

     Are you one of that vast army which contends that they are "born tired"? If so, you are not a normal, healthy individual.

2. Lazy; shiftless.
   • 2009, Jeffery Farnol, The Definite Object: A Romance of New York, page 7:

     But, lord! Young Har never finishes anything – too tired! 'Ang me, sir, if I don't think 'e were born tired!

   • 1910, G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong With The World:

     New South Wales is quite literally regarded as a place where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest; that is, a paradise for uncles who have turned dishonest and for nephews who are born tired.

   • 2013, Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, page 9:

     "...This habit of uselessly wasting time, is the whole difficulty; and it is vastly important to you, and still more so to your children that you should break this habit.” When Johnston, who was “born tired,” proposed to leave Illinois for Missouri, Lincoln scolded him in language that could well have applied to his peripatetic father: "such a notion is utterly foolish. What can you do in Missouri, better than here [in Illinois]?...

See also

• born sleeping