pull time

pull time verb: to be sentenced to a term in prison.

Verb

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

To be sentenced to a term in prison.
- "I don't want to pull any more time," Junior tells me, "but I wouldn't take anything in the world for the experience I ad in prison."1965, Tom Wolfe, The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, page 145
- I've talked to men who have pulled time all over the country and they say it's the same everywhere.1967, Malcolm Brady, On the Yard, page 42

pull time (countable and uncountable, plural pull times)

The amount of time spent pulling.
- It is clear that the re-doing of the phasic structure of the cycle, according to an increase in pull time, occurs not only in the process of learning but also during improvement of motor skill.1972, Yessis Review of Soviet Physical Education and Sports
- The effect on performance is large at first for small increases in the pull time.2001, WIAPP: The Second IEEE Workshop on Internet Applications, →ISBN
The time when something should pull.
- Pitts said his whole family lends a hand when pull time comes around, including his grandson, Joe Buchs, a senior in agricultural construction systems management (ACSM).2003, Agri-naturalist - Volumes 109-113, page 62
- On processing a pull request, the latest estimates of μᵢ and σᵢ are returned with the object values to the proxy (see Figure 2), which will use them to calculate expected object value and decide the next pull time.2004, Mario A. Nascimento, Proceedings of the Thirtieth International Conference on Very Large Data Bases, →ISBN, page 197
(trucking) The time when trucks pull in for loading and pull out with new loads.
- Each truck would have a set "pull" time when it would leave for the disposal site and be replaced by an empty truck.1960, Black & Veatch, Incineration, page 139
- Some suppliers have an extended pull time due to poor automation.1996, Barbara V. Anderson, The Art and Science of Computer Assisted Ordering, →ISBN

They probably told you you wouldn't pull time, you weren't old enough yet.1998, Dana Stabenow, Fire and Ice, page 83:
It was self-defense after all; Moose wouldn't pull time or even go to trial.2001, Nancy Bartholomew, Strip Poker, →ISBN, page 780:
In principle, you could create a chart that describes the final tensions arrived at by using different combinations of tension and pull time.2002, Howard Brody, Rodney Cross, Crawford Lindsey, The Physics and Technology of Tennis, page 307:

Verb
third-person singular present	pulls time
present participle	pulling time
past participle	pulled time
past	pulled time
Noun
plural	pull times

What does pull time mean?: Pull time means to be sentenced to a term in prison.
How do you use pull time in a sentence?: They probably told you you wouldn't pull time, you weren't old enough yet.
What part of speech is pull time?: Pull time can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of pull time?: The past tense of pull time is pulled time.

Adapted from Wiktionary: pull time (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: 2026-09-02

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