Word.ws English Dictionary

pulled out all the stops

pulled out all the stops is the simple past and past participle of pull out all the stops.

Meaning of pull out all the stops

Verb

pull out all the stops (third-person singular simple present pulls out all the stops, present participle pulling out all the stops, simple past and past participle pulled out all the stops)

  1. (idiomatic) To hold back or reserve nothing.
    • They pulled out all the stops for the gala wedding.
    Synonyms:
    empty the tank, give one's all, go all out, go balls to the wall, go the whole nine yards, go up to eleven, open the floodgates

Questions about pulled out all the stops

What is pulled out all the stops the simple past and past participle of?
Pulled out all the stops is the simple past and past participle of pull out all the stops.

Words near pulled out all the stops in the dictionary

  1. pulled oneself together
  2. pulled oneself up by one's bootstraps
  3. pulled oneself up by one's own bootstraps
  4. pulled out
  5. pulled out all stops
  6. pulled out all the stops
  7. pulled out of a hat
  8. pulled out of one's arse
  9. pulled out of one's ass
  10. pulled out of the bag
  11. pulled out of the fire

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pulled out all the stops (page history and authors); pull out all the stops (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: “pulled out all the stops.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pulled_out_all_the_stops. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.