pull off

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pull off (third-person singular simple present pulls off, present participle pulling off, simple past and past participle pulled off)

1. To remove by pulling.

   Pull off old blossoms so that the plant will keep flowering.

   As soon as she got home, she pulled off her clothes.

2. (idiomatic) To achieve; to succeed at something difficult.

   Six pages is a lot to write in one night. Do you think she can pull it off?

   • 1920, Eric Leadbitter, Rain Before Seven, page 122:

     "Oh, I shall pull it off. I shall jolly well have to succeed," said Michael light-heartedly; feeling unusually confident.

   • 1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 56:

     ‘Never thought I'd pull it off. Picked up that colour flick on the water first-rate. Movement, Edmund, damme, got it a treat on that water.’

   • 2001 November 18, “What the Muslim World Is Watching”, in The New York Times, retrieved 26 July 2014:

     The preceding year, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the crown prince of Qatar, did a most un-Arab thing: he pulled off a palace coup, taking over the government from his father (who was vacationing in Europe at the time).

   • 2011 September 2, “Wales 2-1 Montenegro”, in BBC‎:

     In a frantic ending Blake and Crofts pulled off brilliant tackles and Hennessey a string of saves to keep Montenegro at bay and earn Speed his first qualifying success as Wales manager.

3. To turn off a road (onto the side of the road, or onto another road).

   After about a mile, we pulled off the main road onto a dirt track.

4. (of a vehicle) To begin moving and then move away; to pull away.

   As the police approached, the car pulled off and sped away into the distance.

5. (transitive, reflexive, vulgar, slang, usually of a male) To masturbate manually.