Word.ws English Dictionary

pulling out all the stops

pulling out all the stops is the present participle and gerund 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 pulling out all the stops

What is pulling out all the stops the present participle and gerund of?
Pulling out all the stops is the present participle and gerund of pull out all the stops.

Words near pulling out all the stops in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pulling 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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