"to pull it off" was at one time used meaning "to win."
And in sentences such as,
I don't think you can pull it off.
, it often implies the idea of "success."
But how did this expression originate?
Learn English – Where does “pull it off” come from
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Best Answer
Two immediate lexical progenitors produced transitive use of the colloquial phrasal verb 'to pull off' in the sense of
Those two progenitors were uses in these senses:
Senses 1a and 1b are attested in OED from before 1425 (citation composed before 1399) and around 1500, respectively. Sense 2 is attested from 1860:
Although pulling off boots and coats, etc. (1b), often has a sudden, tangential element of success, it is likely that, at least in the US, transitional, figurative political uses played directly into the ready adoption of the sense denoting successful accomplishment, achievement or production.
A painstaking examination of primary sources — uses in the popular press — showed continuing dominance of sense 1b into the mid-1800s (lots of clothes were pulled off during that period), along with, much less frequent, uses in sense 1a (often with reference to pulling off parts of plants in articles concerning agriculture and gardening; sometimes with reference to pulling off flesh and skin).
The principal difference between senses 1 and 2 is relative materiality. Sense 1 takes tactile material as its object: boats, clothes, vegetation, flesh. The later sense 2 takes ideas or concepts as its object: a win, a success, an accomplishment, an achievement. Such chronological development of lexical sense is a standard process; it goes alongside the usually less-definable adoption of figurative senses.
Some transitional US uses, notably political, illustrate the development of the sense, from material things pulled off to immaterial, by way of figurative uses:
These early, figurative US uses from 1855 and 1856 precede the earliest US use of 'pull off' in sense 2 found, from 1858:
As will be deduced from the currency of the stakes, if nothing else, that 1858 use, although it appears in a US newspaper, refers to an English horserace.
Setting aside the US transitional, figurative uses of 'pull off' in political contexts, and turning to UK uses, evidence of the development of transitive sense 2 appears earlier. In 1851, for example, rhetorically linked uses of the intransitive verbal phrase 'came off' and the transitive 'carry off' prepare for a third with the transitive 'pull [something] off'. The general subject is horse racing, and the direct object is an event:
A slightly (four days) earlier use in scare quotes suggests the application of 'pull off' to the immaterial object of a horse-racing title is a neologism...at least as concerns the author of the piece and his judgement of Dublin readers' familiarity with the use of the phrase:
Here again, in the UK, uses of 'pull off' in sense 2 are presaged by figurative uses in political contexts in sense 1b; such figurative use again involves the removal of articles of attire. One such, a very early instance, is this citation from the OED sense 1b attestations:
Another, contemporaneous with (although a few days earlier than) the 1851 uses in horse-racing contexts:
Figurative uses with reference to the pulling off of masks were thematic in the evidence I examined pertaining to sense 1b.
Side Note on 'Stake' and 'Stakes'
It may be objected to the foregoing account that a 'stake' is material: valuable goods or money wagered on the outcome of a bet, game, or event. So, then, uses of 'pull off' with, as direct object, the 'stake' wagered on a horse race, must at least be said to be figurative uses in sense 1a ("to take away" something "by pulling from where it is held"), rather than sense 2 ("to succeed at something" or "to win something").
However, the citations shown make clear that, where 'stake' or 'stakes' is used as the object of 'pulling off', it is being used in a specialized sense, and denotes the race (singular) or class of race (plural), rather than the material prize. The sense is OED sense 3a of stake, n.2:
Thus, where the direct object of 'pull off' shown in the citations is not the "match" (1860, Bailey's Monthly Mag) or the "event" (1851, The Era), but rather "the two thousand guineas stake" (1858, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle) or the "First Class of Trainers' Stakes" (1851, Freemans Journal), the denotation of 'stake' is the race and the denotation of 'Stakes' is the class of race.