When Kentrell from West Memphis, Arkansas, worked for a granite company, his co-workers who were about to put two pieces of granite together would say I’m going to pull a seam. But why would they use the word pull for the action of pushing...
A listener from Richmond, Virginia, remembers an old game called buckeye that consists of metaphorically pulling someone’s leg, then calling Buckeye! and tugging one’s own lower eyelid. Martha suggests that it may be related to a 19th...
Why do we say someone is making money hand over fist? Does it have to do with two competitors putting one hand over the other on a baseball bat to determine who’s up first? Or does it have to do with pulling a rope? This is part of a complete...
“He’s sharp as the corner of a round table.” “She’s so sad she’s pulling a face as long as a fiddle.” If startling similes leaving you “grinning like a basket full of possum heads,” you’ll...
pull v.—Gloss: to participate in an arm-wrestling contest. «Arm wrestling—or “pulling,” as the devotee knows it—has its subtleties, believe me.…Bean is a massive, radiant, heavy-booted man in his 50s, with a white handlebar mustache...
pull the chute v. phr.— «There was a big stigma about concussions years ago—‘Nah, he’s not that hurt.” He’s pulling the ‘chute, which is another term for pulling up lame. He’s soft. He can’t play tough...