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Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

pull rank en · VERB

Pronunciation

Meanings

  1. To assert one's authority over a subordinate who disagrees.
    • And don't try pulling rank again: your answer, not your age, will determine your fate! 2004, Intelligent Systems, translated by Nintendo of America, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Nintendo, GameCube, level/area: The Great Tree:
    • You can definitely pull rank on me on this — 2025 August 1, Ezra Klein, “Behind Trump and Vance Is This Man’s Movement”, in The New York Times:
    • Graduate schools teach students to use footnotes as authorities — barriers to anyone's questioning the author's conclusions. Professionalism then becomes a matter of pulling rank: the person who has the most footnotes has the last say. 1980 February 9, Charley Shively, “Radical History: Not Radical Enough”, in Gay Community News, volume 7, number 28, page 12:

Forms

SpellingFeaturesLabelsSource
pulls rank Number=Sing, Person=3, Tense=Pres lexicographic
pulled rank Tense=Past, VerbForm=Part lexicographic
pulled rank Tense=Past lexicographic
pulling rank Tense=Pres, VerbForm=Part lexicographic

Relateds

throw one's weight around

Translations (3)

pt carteirada (Translations) · pl wykorzystać swoje stanowisko (Translations) · pl wykorzystywać swoje stanowisko (Translations)