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Glite Dictionary
leg-pull

leg-pull

7.1
A joke that tries to make someone believe a false story for fun
  • noun
  • /lɛg pʊl/
  • Archaic
translation icon : broma
  • "With three older brothers, Brian Fellows was used to having his leg pulled.

Examples

  • - Is this a leg-pull, Sparks?

    A Night to Remember (1958)

  • Everyone laughed when they found out it was just a leg-pull to get her to believe in ghosts.

  • It's the old leg-pull.

    Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969)

  • When she claimed she won the lottery, I realized it was just a leg-pull.

  • At first, I thought his story was true, but then I saw it was a classic leg-pull.

Synonyms

leg-pulling
vsleg-pull
  • Informal
7.0

An act of joking to make someone believe something not true

has identical meaning but uses a different grammatical form

How Teasing

tease
17 4.0
leg-pull
  • Archaic
7.1
prank
  • Informal
202 3.2
joke
∞ 1.0

Surface Forms

leg-pull singular
leg-pulls plural

Morphology

leg-pull = leg + pull (semi-transparent) = leg + pull

Formed from 'leg' + 'pull' but the idiomatic meaning 'teasing' is not a literal consequence of pulling a leg, so learners must know the idiom.

Etymology

Leg-pull comes from the simple image of someone grabbing your leg and giving it a quick pull, which would make you stumble or react. A helpful way to remember leg-pull is that it means a small, playful trick, 'to tease' or 'to make someone believe something that is not true'.