Word.ws English Dictionary

pull the rug

pull the rug is the ellipsis of pull the rug out from under.

Meaning of pull the rug out from under

Verb

pull the rug out from under (third-person singular simple present pulls the rug out from under, present participle pulling the rug out from under, simple past and past participle pulled the rug out from under)

  1. (idiomatic) To suddenly remove support from.
    • But his organisation has been knocked off course by unexpected events: an economic downturn and 'austerity'... the Croydon tram crash... Brexit... and now a global pandemic that has pulled the rug from beneath Transport for London's feet.2020 July 15, Mike Brown talks to Paul Clifton, “Leading London's "hidden heroes"”, in Rail, page 42

Forms of pull the rug

third-person singular presentpulls the rug
present participlepulling the rug
past participlepulled the rug
pastpulled the rug

Questions about pull the rug

What is pull the rug the ellipsis of?
Pull the rug is the ellipsis of pull the rug out from under.

Words near pull the rug in the dictionary

  1. pull the pin
  2. pull the plug
  3. pull the pud
  4. pull the reins in on someone
  5. pull the reins in on something
  6. pull the rug
  7. pull the rug out from under
  8. pull the shutters down
  9. pull the string
  10. pull the trigger
  11. pull the wires

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pull the rug (page history and authors); pull the rug out from under (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 the rug.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pull_the_rug. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.