“Pulling Your Leg” Idiom Meaning, Origin & History | Superduper English Idioms
Channel: Superduper English Idioms
Date: 06/07/2020

0:00 - How to Say, “Pulling your leg…”
0:21 - Examples of “Pulling your leg…”
1:01 - Meaning of “Pulling your leg…”
1:46 - Origin of “Pulling your leg…”
3:24 - More Examples of “Pulling your leg…”
4:15 - Conclusion

“Pulling your leg…”

If a friend told you something that was not true just to see your reaction, she might have said, “Haha! I’m joking… I was just pulling your leg!”

“Stop pulling my leg and tell me the truth,” you might say to your little brother who always likes to joke around.

You might admit to your cousin that you’re just teasing, “Nah, it’s not true. I’m just pulling your leg!”

You may also sarcastically say that you’re joking, when in fact you’re not, “Yeah, I’m just pulling your leg. No, really, it’s true. I’m not pulling your leg.”

“Pulling someone’s leg,” means that you are joking, being sarcastic or outright lying.

Most of the time, you’ll hear the idiom, “pull your leg” or “pull my leg”, when someone is joking or kidding around - and rarely when someone really wants to lie.

There are many explanations for the origin of this idiom, but most of them are unverified and don’t seem to make much sense.

The explanation that makes the most sense is that if you wanted to have a laugh at the expense of someone else, you’d have to make them look foolish somehow…

… and the easiest way to do this was to “pull their leg”, so that they would lose their balance and stumble or trip.

It is perhaps thus that the idiom, “pull someone’s leg,” has come to be used when you are joking with someone - you make them believe you, only to reveal that it was a lie, and have a laugh at their expense.

“Shaking a leg,” is another idiom that has to do with legs, but the visualization is that instead of other people pulling your leg, you are “shaking” your own legs.

As you might imagine, to “shake a leg”, means to hurry up, to get a move on. When you get up to run, you might shake your legs a little to stretch.

Just make sure that you don’t get the two idioms mixed up! They have very different meanings.

At a party, perhaps you shocked your family with the delicious pie you brought, “I’m just pulling everyone’s leg, I didn’t bake it! You all know that I’ve never made a pie in my life…”

“You must be pulling my leg! You really bought tickets for us?” you might say when your partner surprises you.

“We’re only pulling your leg, we bought you a new car, of course!” is something your parents might say to you after pretending that they bought you a rusted old used car.

Whenever you want to reveal that you’ve been joking, kidding or teasing, make sure to let the other person know that you were only “pulling their leg”!

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