Word.ws English Dictionary

pull back the curtain

pull back the curtain verb: to reveal an underlying truth.

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To reveal an underlying truth.
    • Understanding how we can be manipulated helps us pull back the curtain on charlatans and can even protect democracy.2020 December 17, Nathan J. Robinson, “The Sophist and The Magician”, in Current Affairs, archived from the original on 10 Oct 2024

Forms of pull back the curtain

third-person singular presentpulls back the curtain
present participlepulling back the curtain
past participlepulled back the curtain
pastpulled back the curtain

Questions about pull back the curtain

What does pull back the curtain mean?
Pull back the curtain means to reveal an underlying truth.
What part of speech is pull back the curtain?
Pull back the curtain is a verb.
What is the past tense of pull back the curtain?
The past tense of pull back the curtain is pulled back the curtain.

Words near pull back the curtain in the dictionary

  1. pull at someone's heart strings
  2. pull at someone's heartstrings
  3. pull away
  4. pull away the shoulder
  5. pull back
  6. pull back the curtain
  7. pull buoy
  8. pull buoys
  9. pull cord
  10. pull cords
  11. pull down

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pull back the curtain (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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Cite this entry: “pull back the curtain.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pull_back_the_curtain. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.