Word.ws English Dictionary

underpull

underpull noun: a driver for pumping that has the eccentrics under the gear wheel.

Noun

underpull (plural underpulls)

  1. A driver for pumping that has the eccentrics under the gear wheel.
    • Am therefore suggesting, that when you have a prospective customer, not to be so exacting, not to require a concrete foundation, neither the underpull and a vent spout leading to the roof .1914, Joseph F. Mueller, The Operative Miller - Volume 19, page 396
    • Our underpull pumping power is designed to pump wells in any direction.1918 June, “No. 2 Geared Durnell”, in The Employer: Official Journal of the Oklahoma Employers, volume 3, number 1, page 30
  2. Synonym of undertow.
    • "He's got hold of him!" rang out, as the struggling swimmer seemed to snatch at the shoulder of the drowning man. Then an appalled murmur arose. " It's an underpull!"1894, Eva Wilder McGlasson Brodhead, Ministers of Grace, page 73
    • A white face, blurred and indistinct, seemed to rise up from beneath the rushing bubbles till, just as it was about to jump to the surface, as things do that come up, down it was drawn again by that terrible underpull which has been fatal to so many good swimmers.1901, Richard Jefferies, The Open Air, page 133
    Synonyms:
    undertow
  3. (broadly) A downward pull or force.
    • […] steps stretching the height of the tower carry upward the longings of men who wished to escape the underpull of time and gravity.1981, City Arts Monthly, page 56
    • Stimulating forces tingled more intensely from the lower underpull of gravity.2009, Robert Klardon, Gravityball, page 149
  4. A negative influence.
    • Some of the children are from the best stock of India, but some have everything against them (and the underpull of heredity can tell hardly on a child).2002, Amy Carmichael, Gold Cord: The Story of a Fellowship
    • On the other hand, in the mid-tempo swingers and even in the up-tempo anthems, the exhilaration in his voice—"Oh, look at me now!"—has an ironic underpull, the insinuation of his Jersey accent in the midst of that wondrously uptown pronunciation, reflecting both the memory of how tough it was and...2005, Thomas J. Ferraro, Feeling Italian: The Art of Ethnicity in America, page 105
  5. A secret or indirect influence.
    • And yet we can not escape from the feeling that very much of what we are has been determined for us by some mysterious underpull, the nature of which we do not always understand and the purposes of which we are dull to interpret.1913, William Riley Halstead, A Cosmic View of Religion, page 33
    • This dilemma of the "friendly threesome," and the underpull of tensions that sustain the relationship, is rarely acknowledged, while almost universal recognition is given to its more pronounced version, the eternal triangle.1972, Helen Wortis, Helen Zunser Wortis, Clara Rabinowitz, The Women's Movement: Social and Psychological Perspectives, page 95
  6. A handhold that allows one to pull oneself up from below.
    • Higher the climb followed the line of least resistance up a succession of slabs, flakes, and cracks, where the ordinary hold was an underpull for the hands and friction for the feet.1912, Harold Spender, In Praise of Switzerland, page 158
    • Using the icicle as an underpull, I chipped a good jug over the top and made two footholds on the steep slab.1971, Don Whillans, Alick Ormerod, Don Whillans: Portrait of a Mountaineer, page 184
  7. The act of pulling (any sense) insufficiently.
    • Algebraically, there may be little difference between underpull where the correct response fails to be attractive to the minority group members for cultural reasons, as discussed above, and overpull that acts for the majority group, attracting them to the correct response for cultural reasons...1982, Ronald A. Berk, Handbook of Methods for Detecting Test Bias, page 184
    • El Paso points out that it does not have an operational balancing agreement with the other pipeline, but rather has a predetermined allocation agreement under which any overpull or underpull by a shipper utilizing the Franklin point is allocated prorata to all parties moving gas through that point .1998, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Reports, pages 61-180
    1. Failure to pull a muscle as far as it can contract.
      • Half an inch (1.25 cm) of shortening due to underpull is far less serious than half an inch of lengthening with slow union due to overpull.1977, James Kyle, Walter Pye, Pye's Surgical Handicraft, page 282
      • Increased length and inhibited stabilizing muscles result in underpull at a motion segment dependent on the normality of its antagonist muscle as well.2011, Nicola J. Petty, Ann P. Moore, Neuromusculoskeletal Examination and Assessment

Verb

underpull (third-person singular simple present underpulls, present participle underpulling, simple past and past participle underpulled)

  1. (transitive) To exert one's influence secretly.
    • His Lordship, while he was a Student, and during his Incapacity to practise aboveboard, was contented to underpull, as they call it, and managed diverse Suits for his Country Friends and Relations[…]a. 1734, Roger North, The Life of the Right Honourable Francis North
    • It may have been that the lower ranks of the apprenticii, in the words of The Compleat Solicitor, underpulled causes during the long term of study then necessary before the rank of utter barrister was attained.1896, Edmund Brown Viney Christian, A Short History of Solicitors
  2. To pull (any sense) insufficiently.
    • The common failing is to underpull in these early hours because of fear of overpull .1941, The Year Book of Industrial and Orthopedic Surgery, page 236
    • The tendency is usually to underpull, rather than to exceed the standard tension.1965, Harry Bouchard, Francis H. Moffitt, Surveying, page 25

Adjective

underpull (comparative more underpull, superlative most underpull)

  1. Designed to be pulled and mounted on the underside.
    • One-piece white vitreous china flush pipe cover and white vitreous china bolt caps. White Vitreous china swelled front low down tank with underpull lever.1918, Sweet's Architectural Catalog File, page 839
    • […] underpull lever with china handle, elevated, high pressure compound cover ball cock, standard pattern flush valve with 14 " overflow tube, tinned copper float, […]1919, The American Architect Specification Manual - Volume 1, page 138

Examples of underpull in a sentence

  • A second later the underpull seized him and he was lost beneath the stone and held there by the force of surging water.2020, Charles Dodd White, How Fire Runs:
  • Eddying against the stream of rhetoric about protection came an underpull from Dissent a force untested electorally since 1841.1985, Michael Bentley, Politics Without Democracy: Great Britain, 1815-1914, page 131:
  • She stared over the water, trying to resist the underpull of his deep massage, trying to hold on to the anger slipping away from her like the tension in her shoulders.1993, Tracy Hughes, Calloway Corners, page 82:
  • The music and lights pulsed like the inside of a migraine; the drink had an evil underpull.2011, Patrick McGuinness, The Last Hundred Days:

Synonyms of underpull

Forms of underpull

Noun
pluralunderpulls
Verb
third-person singular presentunderpulls
present participleunderpulling
past participleunderpulled
pastunderpulled
Adjective
comparativemore underpull
superlativemost underpull

Origin of underpull

From under- + pull.

Words formed from underpull

Questions about underpull

What does underpull mean?
Underpull means a driver for pumping that has the eccentrics under the gear wheel.
How do you use underpull in a sentence?
A second later the underpull seized him and he was lost beneath the stone and held there by the force of surging water.
What part of speech is underpull?
Underpull can be a noun, a verb or an adjective.
What is the plural of underpull?
The plural of underpull is underpulls.

Words near underpull in the dictionary

  1. underpruned
  2. underprunes
  3. underpruning
  4. underpublicized
  5. underpublished
  6. underpull
  7. underpulled
  8. underpuller
  9. underpullers
  10. underpulling
  11. underpulls

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: underpull (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-underpull.wav.

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