Word.ws English Dictionary

pull a fast one

pull a fast one verb: to carry out a trick or act of deception; to behave contrary to expectations.

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic, often, slang) To carry out a trick or act of deception; to behave contrary to expectations.
    • This isn't worth anything like what you paid them. I think they pulled a fast one on you.
    • I haven't forgotten the way you tried to pull a fast one over me when you first came here—over the Jaintiapur plantation that I had wanted for some time.1907, Maurice Dekobra, The Widows Might

Examples of pull a fast one in a sentence

  • Bill Clinton, asserting that the Democratic nominee would "pull a fast one on the American people" and raise taxes by hundreds of billions of dollars.1992 August 7, Andrew Rosenthal, “The 1992 Campaign: Bush Says Rival Would ‘Pull a Fast One’ Over Taxes”, in New York Times, retrieved 03...
  • The chap opposite seems to be trying to pull a fast one, and having seen the guard is trying to buy a ticket online... but doesn't succeed.2024 April 17, “Rural railways: do they deliver?”, in RAIL, number 1007, page 57:

Forms of pull a fast one

third-person singular presentpulls a fast one
present participlepulling a fast one
past participlepulled a fast one
pastpulled a fast one

Questions about pull a fast one

What does pull a fast one mean?
Pull a fast one means to carry out a trick or act of deception; to behave contrary to expectations.
How do you use pull a fast one in a sentence?
Bill Clinton, asserting that the Democratic nominee would "pull a fast one on the American people" and raise taxes by hundreds of billions of dollars.
What part of speech is pull a fast one?
Pull a fast one is a verb.
What is the past tense of pull a fast one?
The past tense of pull a fast one is pulled a fast one.

Words near pull a fast one in the dictionary

  1. Pulkit
  2. Pulkovo Heights
  3. pulks
  4. pull
  5. pull a face
  6. pull a fast one
  7. pull a few strings
  8. pull a Homer
  9. pull a lever
  10. pull a permit
  11. pull a rabbit from a hat

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pull a fast one (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-pull a fast one.ogg.

Cite this entry: “pull a fast one.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pull_a_fast_one. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.