pull someone's leg
Formspulls someone's leg, pulling someone's leg, pulled someone's leg
- 1To tease or fool someone, usually by telling a playful lie meant to provoke a reaction.
Like a deadpan friend spinning a fake story just to watch you fall for it.
My brother loves to pull my leg whenever I'm taking myself too seriously.
We only realized he was pulling our leg about the surprise party after we'd planned everything.
Similartease, kid, fool, josh, rib
Note
A Scottish phrase that first meant making a fool of someone, often by cheating them. One explanation pictures a yank on the leg that sends the victim stumbling. Today the trick is a friendly lie. It sits most naturally in the progressive, as a confession that ends the joke: "I'm just pulling your leg," as Eric Idle's Mr. Cheeky says in Life of Brian (1979).
- 2To get money out of someone, whether by arranging a loan or by outright swindling.
The verb 'to-pull-his-leg' means to extract from his pocket all the lucre it will yield.
1893, John Kendrick Bangs, Coffee and Repartee"I would 'pull his leg,' but Laura will not work with me." The expression "pulling his leg," Miss Sullivan explained as meaning to coax or wheedle his wealth out of him.
1895, Reports of Decisions in ProbateNote
Here the cheating that the teasing meaning has shed comes to the fore. In the 1880s and 1890s the phrase meant coaxing cash out of someone. John Kendrick Bangs's Coffee and Repartee (1893) glosses it as taking from a pocket "all the lucre it will yield." The sense is now obsolete, so a modern reader will hear only a joke. Keep it for discussing period writing.
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Origin
The phrase comes from Scotland, where it originally meant to make a fool of someone, often by cheating them. One theory holds that it derives from tripping a person by yanking or pulling their leg, making them stumble and look foolish.