Born/birth

Question

Sir,

How to use born and birth? What are the tenses of "born"(past. past participle)?

1.She born a bady.

2.She birthed a bady.

3.She gave birth a baby.

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4.He is born clever.

What is function of "born" here ?

Thanks.

Casi · Accepted Answer

Verb: bear (present), bore (past), born or borne (past participle)
Adjective: born

She bore a child last night.
Only women can bear children.
She is a born leader.

She has borne a son. (past participle)
He was born yesterday. (past participle)
Someone bore (gave birth to) him yesterday.

Matthewg · Answer

Hi Hanuman,

I'm a native speaker, not a teacher, so my explanations aren't too technical.

1) She was born a baby. This means she was born as a baby. It's tautological, because everyone is born as a baby. You could also say 'She was borne a baby,' where borne is the past participle of bear.

2) She birthed a baby. I don't think this is correct. I have seen birthed used very few times, and only in cases where it meant born (e.g. Dresden is a city birthed out of ashes).

3) She gave birth to a baby. This is correct.

4) He is born clever. This is a fragment of a sentence. A full sentence would be 'He was born clever' or 'One in ten children is born clever'. Here the function of born signifies that the person's intelligence is innate, and not acquired through studying.

Born/birth

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