Meaning
Said of a task that is extremely difficult, tedious and frustrating to accomplish - classically getting information, agreement or payment out of a person who is reluctant to provide it. Informal; originally American English. Informal; conveys exasperation at slow, uncooperative people or processes. Regional use: General English (American in origin).
Origin
American English in origin, built on the pain and physical effort of tooth-drawing in the era before modern dentistry; the verb 'pull' had meant extracting a tooth since at least the 17th century. The earliest documented figurative occurrences are American and cluster in the mid-1830s: the wordhistories.net survey traces the phrase to The Jerseyman of Morristown, New Jersey (6 May 1835), quoting the Richmond Whig's grudging concession after a Virginia election, and the Oxford English Dictionary's earliest quotation is the Knickerbocker magazine (1836), in which a schoolmaster's pay 'came like pulling so many teeth'. The Phrase Finder also cites Godey's Lady's Book (1855), where money must be extracted from certain debtors in the same way.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- it's like pulling teeth
- like having teeth pulled
- like pulling eye teeth
- like pulling teeth out
Usage Examples
- Getting a straight answer out of the supplier was like pulling teeth.
- It was like pulling teeth to persuade my grandfather to talk about his years in the merchant navy.
- Collecting the survey forms from students proved like pulling teeth until we started offering free coffee.