Other forms: pulled, pulling, pulls
To pull something is to take hold of it and move it towards you. You pull a door open, pull a suitcase along behind you on its wheels, pull a chair up to the table.
Pull is the other half of push, and the two words live together on every shop door in the country. It stretches easily: a tractor pulls a trailer, a dentist pulls a tooth, a band still pulls a crowd of two thousand. As a noun it is both the act — one hard pull and the cork came out — and a force that draws you in: the pull of the tide, the pull of home. Someone with pull has quiet influence over how decisions go. Learn the fixed phrases whole, because their meanings are not in the parts: you pull a muscle by accident, pull yourself together means calm down, pull through means recover from something serious, and pull someone's leg means tease them.
1verbpullTo take hold of something and move it towards you.~48%
“Pull the handle towards you — that door does not push open.”
2verbhaulTo drag or tow something along behind you.~36%
“The tractor pulled a trailer piled with hay.”
3verbremoveTo remove something by pulling it out.~2%
“The dentist pulled the tooth in under a minute.”
4verbattractTo attract people or attention.~2%
“A name like that still pulls a crowd on a Friday night.”
5nounactAn act of pulling something.~6%
“One hard pull and the cork came free.”
6nounforceA force that draws you towards something, or quiet influence over people.~6%
“He felt the pull of home every autumn.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 21 sentences found in the wild and placed 16 of them on a sense (5 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
pull is a physical action.
Pull is Old English pullian, to pull, draw, tug, pluck off, and past that nobody is sure where it came from. Its relatives across the North Sea lean towards picking and stripping: West Frisian pulje, to shell or husk, and Low German pulen, to pick, pluck, strip off husks. The oldest pulling in the family sounds less like a rope and more like taking the shell off a pea.
Old English
pullian — to pull, draw, tug, pluck off
Middle English
pullen
English, today
pull
Verb from Middle English pullen, from Old English pullian (“to pull, draw, tug, pluck off”), of uncertain ultimate origin. Related to West Frisian pûlje (“to shell, husk”), Middle Dutch pullen (“to drink”), Middle Dutch polen (“to peel, strip”), Low German pulen (“to pick, pluck, pull, tear, strip off husks”), Icelandic púla (“to work hard, beat”). Noun from Middle English pul, pull, pulle, from the verb pullen (“to pull”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA