Pull Idioms: Pull the Plug, Pull Your Weight, and More

An “idiom” is an expression whose meaning can’t be understood literally just by looking at the words that make it up.

For example, if you “take the cake,” you’re not stealing pastry. You’re good at something! If you’re “sharp as a tack,” you don’t have fingers like Edward Scissorhands. You’re really smart. 

You can tell pretty easily how some idioms got started. “Moving the goalposts,” for example, is an expression borrowed from football. Giving a “one–two punch” came from boxing. 

It’s a lot less clear where other idioms came from though. Let’s look at a few that start with the word “pull,” and you’ll see what I mean. 

Pull the Plug

First, there’s “to pull the plug on something.” This means to end something, often abruptly. For example, you might “pull the plug” on your son’s sleepover if you learned he and his friends were TP-ing the neighbor’s yard.  

This expression sounds like it refers to pulling an electrical plug from its socket. But that’s not the origin of the idiom. Instead, it refers to how you flush an old-fashioned toilet: by pulling out a stopper, which empties the bowl into the pipes below.  

This used to be a pretty remarkable act! A 1932 book describes how a character “pulled the plug of the water-closet and turned to us with a triumphant smile as the house echoed with the demonstrably efficient deluge.”

If only we got that excited about flushing the toilet these days!

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Pull Out All the Stops

Next, there’s “pulling out all the stops.” This means to do everything you possibly can to make something happen. For example, if you “pulled out all the stops” to get to your friend’s birthday party on time, you might have sprinted the last mile to her home after your car broke down.

This expression refers to an activity most of us have never done: playing a pipe organ. An organ is like an overgrown pan flute; it produces sound by pumping wind into pipes of different lengths. The bottom of each pipe is covered with a wooden “stop” or seal. The organist pushes the stop over the bottom of the pipe to silence it and pulls it away to bring the pipe into play. Thus, to create maximum volume, organists “pull out all the stops.” They let the full measure of wind flow into each of the organ’s pipes. 

Organs are complex instruments, but rudimentary versions were built way back in the third century BC. The first recorded use of this idiom, however, wasn’t until 1865, in a book of essays.  

Pulling Your Weight

Then there’s pulling one’s weight. This idiom also refers to something most of us have never done: crewing. That’s a sport in which several rowers work together to propel a boat across the water, using oars. There’s sweep-style crewing, where each rower pulls one oar with both hands. There’s also scull-style crewing, where each rower holds two oars, one in each hand. Either way, to win a race, all rowers must literally pull their own weight as they drag the oars against the water, pushing the boat forward. 

Thus, “pulling your own weight” came to mean doing your share of the work, rather than being a drag on your teammates. This expression was first seen in written use in 1921 in a British weekly.

Pulling the Wool Over Your Eyes

Finally, there’s “pulling the wool over one’s eyes.” This means to trick someone, as in, “I thought our company was doing well until I showed up for work and saw a ‘closed’ sign on the door. The manager really pulled the wool over our eyes.”

You might think this expression has to do with woolen caps. You’d be close. The “wool” in this phrase comes from woolen wigs—the kind worn by noblemen in 16th- and 17th-century Europe. 

In fact, wigs have been worn since the earliest recorded times. The ancient Egyptians shaved their heads and wore wigs as protection from the sun. The ancient Greeks and Romans did the same. And they used wool from cows, goats, yak, sheep—even horses—to make them.

Wigs really took off in the 17th century, when King Louis XIV of France started wearing one to cover his balding head. Aristocrats and courtiers took note and started wearing wigs themselves. Wigs soon became a symbol of social status, and styles eventually became so extreme that wigs often covered a man’s back and shoulders and twisted in wide rolls down his chest. Servants were required to boil, curl, and powder these wigs, sometimes daily. And wigs became so tall—and so expensive—that men who wore the biggest, puffiest ones were known as “bigwigs.” 

We still use that word today to mean “an important person.”

It’s easy to imagine one of these top-heavy wigs slipping over someone’s eyes, blinding them temporarily. In that case, they’d be easy to fool, easy to trick. 

You can see from these examples that many idioms come from unusual or unexpected sources. That’s what makes English so strange to learn—and so fascinating to study. 

Samantha Enslen runs Dragonfly Editorial. You can find her at dragonflyeditorial.com or @DragonflyEdit.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.