Word.ws English Dictionary

pull the devil by the tail

pull the devil by the tail verb: to be struggling with poverty, constantly in money difficulties.

Verb

pull the devil by the tail (third-person singular simple present pulls the devil by the tail, present participle pulling the devil by the tail, simple past and past participle pulled the devil by the tail)

  1. To be struggling with poverty, constantly in money difficulties.

Forms of pull the devil by the tail

third-person singular presentpulls the devil by the tail
present participlepulling the devil by the tail
past participlepulled the devil by the tail
pastpulled the devil by the tail

Questions about pull the devil by the tail

What does pull the devil by the tail mean?
Pull the devil by the tail means to be struggling with poverty, constantly in money difficulties.
What part of speech is pull the devil by the tail?
Pull the devil by the tail is a verb.
What is the past tense of pull the devil by the tail?
The past tense of pull the devil by the tail is pulled the devil by the tail.

Words near pull the devil by the tail in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pull the devil by the tail (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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