pull a rabbit out of a hat
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
To produce something unexpectedly or surprisingly
Literally: to literally pull a rabbit from a hat
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
A 32 year old manager may be full of vigour, enthusiasm and malleable but a 52 year old manager has been through a couple of recessions, knows the ropes and cap pull a few more rabbits out of the hat.
If he becomes Chancellor, it will be a gift for cartoonists, with MacGregor trying to make the huge public deficit disappear and pulling rabbits out of hats.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “pull a rabbit out of a hat” mean?
To produce something unexpectedly or surprisingly Literally: to literally pull a rabbit from a hat
Is “pull a rabbit out of a hat” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.