Word.ws English Dictionary

pulling at someone's heartstrings

pulling at someone's heartstrings is the present participle and gerund of pull at someone's heartstrings.

Meaning of pull at someone's heartstrings

Verb

pull at someone's heartstrings (third-person singular simple present pulls at someone's heartstrings, present participle pulling at someone's heartstrings, simple past and past participle pulled at someone's heartstrings)

  1. Synonym of play on someone's heartstrings.
    • “These videos don’t pull at the heartstrings; they make these people look like animals in a zoo instead of individuals that need help,” said Dr Geri-Lynn Utter, a clinical psychologist specializing in addiction.2023 December 17, Olivia Empson, quoting Dr Geri-Lynn Utter, “‘Tranq tourism’: alarm in Philadelphia as TikTokers travel to film drug users”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

Questions about pulling at someone's heartstrings

What is pulling at someone's heartstrings the present participle and gerund of?
Pulling at someone's heartstrings is the present participle and gerund of pull at someone's heartstrings.

Words near pulling at someone's heartstrings in the dictionary

  1. pulling ahead
  2. pulling an all-nighter
  3. pulling apart
  4. pulling aside
  5. pulling at someone's heart strings
  6. pulling at someone's heartstrings
  7. pulling away
  8. pulling back
  9. pulling back the curtain
  10. pulling down
  11. pulling down a notch

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pulling at someone's heartstrings (page history and authors); pull at someone's heartstrings (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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