pull the wool over someone's eyes
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
To deceive or cheat someone by hiding the truth
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
lừa dối hoặc gian lận ai đó bằng cách che giấu sự thật
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: pulling wool over someone's eyes
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
I hope that the hon. Gentleman did not try to pull the wool over the association's eyes, as he usually does.
‘ I can think of one firm that I think had tried to pull the wool over our eyes for many years.
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 the wool over someone's eyes” mean?
To deceive or cheat someone by hiding the truth Literally: pulling wool over someone's eyes
Is “pull the wool over someone's eyes” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.