student asking question

What does "pull something off" mean?

teacher

Native speaker’s answer

Rebecca

Here, Joey is expressing his dislike of Janice by saying "I'd pull my arm off, just so I'd have something to throw at her." We can understand this as meaning, "(even I have nothing to throw at her), I'd be willing to pull off my arm to throw at her." We can understand this expression as specific to this situation, as it usually isn't used in this way. An expression that sounds similar but has a different meaning is "pull something off." It means to succeed, achieve, or win something difficult. It is an informal expression that is used quite often when one wants to highlight the difficulty of the task that was "pulled off" (achieved successfully). Thus, when someone asks, "how did you pull it off?" we can understand this as meaning, "how did you achieve this successfully?" Ex: A: Wow, your proposal was amazing! How did you pull it off? B: A lot of friends helped. It wasn't easy but I'm glad my girlfriend said yes. Ex: I can't believe I pulled it off before the deadline.

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