pull strings
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Influence events or people secretly
Literally: manipulate puppet strings
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
Francis pulled strings to get him out of trouble and into his old school, St something's … ’
Or will Egypt end up with something like a Kemalist " democracy " of the type that long prevailed in Turkey, with a civilian government but the military pulling the strings?
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 strings” mean?
Influence events or people secretly Literally: manipulate puppet strings
Is “pull strings” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.