pull out of the hat
pull out of the hat verb: to select at random, or seemingly at random.
Verb
pull out of the hat (third-person singular simple present pulls out of the hat, present participle pulling out of the hat, simple past and past participle pulled out of the hat)
- To select at random, or seemingly at random.
- Having spent more than £500,000 on players last summer, Crawley can hardly be classed as minnows but they have still punched way above their weight and this kind of performance means no-one will relish pulling them out of the hat in Sunday's draw.2011 January 29, Chris Bevan, “Torquay 0 - 1 Crawley Town”, in BBC
- Ever get the feeling that these guys don’t understand what the actual problems are, and instead turn to pulling random bullshit out of a hat to get views?2026 February 14, @FredrickOrdo [username], X, archived from the original on 17 Feb 2026
- Synonyms:
- pull out of the bag
Synonyms of pull out of the hat
Forms of pull out of the hat
| third-person singular present | pulls out of the hat |
|---|---|
| present participle | pulling out of the hat |
| past participle | pulled out of the hat |
| past | pulled out of the hat |
| alternative form | pull out of a hat |
Questions about pull out of the hat
- What does pull out of the hat mean?
- Pull out of the hat means to select at random, or seemingly at random.
- What part of speech is pull out of the hat?
- Pull out of the hat is a verb.
- What is the past tense of pull out of the hat?
- The past tense of pull out of the hat is pulled out of the hat.
Words near pull out of the hat in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: pull out of the hat (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-pull out of the hat.ogg.
Cite this entry: “pull out of the hat.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pull_out_of_the_hat. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.