Belated birthday what does it mean

Have a great day! Sign in to access your personalized homepage, follow authors and topics you love, and clap for stories that matter to you. By using our site you agree to our privacy policy. Grammar 7 min read. Happy Belated Birthday is Wrong. Belated happy birthday means you are late wishing someone a happy birthday. Belated refers to something delayed or late, such as a belated apology. Add -ly to make belated an adverb. Eliminate errors, get topic ideas, increase productivity, and outrank your competition with the 1 smartest content editor — INK.

It describes something that happens later than expected, such as a holiday greeting or anniversary celebration. You can use belated to describe an action or event. Her belated push for inclusion nearly cost her company a lawsuit.

I wished my sister a belated happy birthday but only after realizing today was Tuesday, not Monday. Stephanie bought a planner so she could stop sending belated birthday greetings. The Smiths scheduled a belated anniversary dinner when their babysitter was available. The school hosted a belated awards ceremony due to inclement weather. My coworker, Karen, was tardy for work again today. Pro tip: Add -ly to make belated an adverb.

The company owner belatedly wishes everyone a Happy New Year. The principal belatedly announces the resumption of classes. The mayor belatedly honors the former council member for his contributions to the city. The expression happy birthday , instead conveys vague wishes that the addressee's life generally go well, combined with the recognition of the birthday. If what is packed into happy birthday were made fully explicit, it would amount to something like: 'Noting that today is your birthday, and appreciating the significance of that fact, I wish you that your life go well in the future'.

There is nothing paradoxical about expressing such wishes with some delay. What is conveyed by a belated happy birthday message is something like: 'Noting that your birthday was a few days ago, and appreciating the significance of that fact, I wish you that your life go well in the future'.

Now, there may still be something syntactically puzzling about belated happy birthday in that belated in it seems to qualify birthday and it is unclear what that would mean relative to what is the birthday delayed?

That puzzle can be resolved if we think of happy birthday analogously to thank you. It is generally accepted that the latter phrase can be used not only as an exclamation actually expressing thanks, but also as a noun phrase standing for something that expresses thanks.

If somebody were to write 'Here is my belated thank you for. Similarly, when we receive a card saying belated happy birthday , we should think of belated as qualifying the whole of happy birthday , rather than just birthday. I would favour the first, because a wish for one to have a happy birthday is possible, but a belated birthday is not, though the second suggests that you are wishing them happiness on their belated birthday.

A belated birthday celebration is of course perfectly possible, but I'd just say "happy birthday" in such a case. A "birthdate" is always a specific date. It cannot be delayed like a dentist appointment. Just because you forgot or missed sending your greetings prior to and up to the actual date it has no bearing on the birth date.

Your greetings are late or belated. Try to diagram the sentence "I wish you a happy belated birthday. It does not make any sense. Delayed birthday wishes make no sense other than realizing our mistake.

Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Ask Question. Asked 8 years, 10 months ago. Active 1 year, 1 month ago. Viewed k times. What's the correct sentence? Belated happy birthday! Happy belated birthday! Improve this question. This combination produces two variants: happy belated birthday and belated happy birthday.

One of them, although used quite a bit, is not very logical. As you know, belated means that something is delayed or late. A birthday — an anniversary of the day someone was born — can not be late.

But greetings sure can! Therefore, it makes much more sense to reverse the two words to say late happy birthday, and hence the expression belated happy birthday is the correct formulation. When the greeting is written correctly, the word belated modifies the phrase happy birthday. This is something to keep in mind for other greetings as well. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Sign in. Log into your account.