Word.ws English Dictionary

pull one's finger out

pull one's finger out verb: to stop wasting time in preliminaries, and concentrate on the important task.

Verb

pull one's finger out (third-person singular simple present pulls one's finger out, present participle pulling one's finger out, simple past and past participle pulled one's finger out)

  1. (idiomatic, slang) To stop wasting time in preliminaries, and concentrate on the important task.
    • You've been sitting there all week. It's time you sorted yourself out and pulled your finger out!
    • Speaking at Mayor's Question Time on February 24, Sheikh said: "It's time for the Government to pull its finger out and give TfL the funding package it needs in the wake of the pandemic.2022 March 23, “Network News: Warning of risk to new-builds unless funding settlement agreed”, in RAIL, number 953, page 18
    Synonyms:
    pull finger

Synonyms of pull one's finger out

Forms of pull one's finger out

third-person singular presentpulls one's finger out
present participlepulling one's finger out
past participlepulled one's finger out
pastpulled one's finger out

Origin of pull one's finger out

Ellipsis of pull one's finger out of one's arse, probably from the notion that one should not sit on one's hands.

Questions about pull one's finger out

What does pull one's finger out mean?
Pull one's finger out means to stop wasting time in preliminaries, and concentrate on the important task.
What part of speech is pull one's finger out?
Pull one's finger out is a verb.
What is the past tense of pull one's finger out?
The past tense of pull one's finger out is pulled one's finger out.

Words near pull one's finger out in the dictionary

  1. pull lists
  2. pull my finger
  3. pull off
  4. pull on
  5. pull one over
  6. pull one's finger out
  7. pull one's finger out of one's arse
  8. pull one's forelock
  9. pull one's hair out
  10. pull one's head in
  11. pull one's horns in

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pull one's finger out (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 one's finger out.ogg.

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