You take your kids to the
amusement park for a day of fun. After an hour, your youngest says he wants to
go home.
Don't tell me
you're tired already!
Use "already" to
talk about something that happened more quickly than was expected:
He just bought
it two weeks ago and it's already broken!
"Already" can go in
a few different spots in a sentence. It can go before an adjective:
Don't tell me
you're already tired.
Or it can go at the end:
I'm tired
already.
It sounds a bit strange to put
it before "are" or "am", although "already" can
go before most verbs:
I already spent
all of it.
You already took
one, didn't you?
Use this phrase to check your
guess about something and show your surprise at the same time.
For example, imagine that your
old friend from college who you haven't seen in 10 years has a son, Nathan. The
last time you saw Nathan, he was 4 years old. Now you run into your friend on
the street and she's with a young man who looks a little bit like your friend.
You can say:
Don't tell me
this is Nathan!
This means "This is
Nathan, isn't it?" as well as "I can't believe this is Nathan!"
Here are some more examples:
Don't tell me you're
tired already!
Don't tell me
you've never seen "Titanic"!
Don't tell me
there's no peanut butter left!
We use this expression in
spoken English, not in writing.