pull back

present singular third person pulls back · participle present pulling back · participle past pulled back · past pulled back

1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see pull, back.

   What's more, I pull back the sheets to take a quick but suspicious gander at Bunny, and she's wearing a pair of my briefs.

   2002, Dennis J. Barton, Cola Wars

   3 more examples

   Her nightgown was thin, and she felt chilly as she stepped across the hall, pulling back the curtain that shielded Gabriel's room.

   1994, Linda Winstead, Guardian Angel

   An uncircumcised man should always take special precautions when bathing to pull back the foreskin and clean carefully around the glans.

   2006, Ruth K. Westheimer, Pierre A. Lehu, Sex for Dummies

   Typically, this meant that the teams were turning around two sets a week, with a train rolling into the depot on a Sunday for what Hinze describes as a "big strip-out". This would pull the carriages back almost to the bare bones.

   2025 July 23, Richard Wilcock, “A new dawn for the Electrostars”, in RAIL, number 1040, page 27

2. To retreat.

   Central African armed forces (FACA) troops were forced to pull back from the town and were planning an operation to retake it, the source said.

   2010, Africasia, Birao is a garrison town near the border with Chad and Sudan

3. transitivehobbiesTo pass (the ball) into a position further from the attacking goal line.

   December 1 2010, Paul Fletcher, BBC News, Ipswich 1-0 West Brom Jason Scotland should have scored after Tamas advanced purposefully down the right before pulling the ball back into the path of his team-mate, who shot straight at Myhill.

4. transitivehobbiesTo score when the team is losing.

   Feb 19 2007, Al-Jazeera, Stylish Sevilla pull level with faltering Barcelona Ronaldinho pulled back a goal for Barca in injury time with a classy free-kick, but it was clearly too little too late to prevent their third Liga defeat.