Word.ws English Dictionary

pull teeth

pull teeth verb: to extract teeth, usually because they are decayed or damaged.

Verb

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

  1. To extract teeth, usually because they are decayed or damaged.
  2. (idiomatic, intransitive) To do something that is especially difficult or effortful.
    • You will probably have to pull teeth to get a straight answer from a car salesman.
    • “We thought there would be a mad rush of students participating in these events, and it was like pulling teeth to get students to come out,” she recalled.2022 October 7, Emma Goldberg, “The Job Market Has Been Like Musical Chairs. Will the Music Stop?”, in The New York Times

Synonyms of pull teeth

Forms of pull teeth

third-person singular presentpulls teeth
present participlepulling teeth
past participlepulled teeth
pastpulled teeth

Questions about pull teeth

What does pull teeth mean?
Pull teeth means to extract teeth, usually because they are decayed or damaged.
What part of speech is pull teeth?
Pull teeth is a verb.
What is the past tense of pull teeth?
The past tense of pull teeth is pulled teeth.

Words near pull teeth in the dictionary

  1. pull start
  2. pull starts
  3. pull station
  4. pull stations
  5. pull strings
  6. pull teeth
  7. pull the devil by the tail
  8. pull the fat out of the fire
  9. pull the fire alarm
  10. pull the football
  11. pull the ladder up after oneself

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pull teeth (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 teeth.ogg.

Cite this entry: “pull teeth.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pull_teeth. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.