pull back the curtain in English

Forms: pulls back the curtain [present, singular, third-person], pulling back the curtain [participle, present], pulled back the curtain [participle, past], pulled back the curtain [past] [Show additional information ▼] [Hide additional information ▲]

Head templates: {{en-verb|*}} pull back the curtain (third-person singular simple present pulls back the curtain, present participle pulling back the curtain, simple past and past participle pulled back the curtain)

Inflected forms

[Show JSON for postprocessed kaikki.org data shown on this page ▼] [Hide JSON for postprocessed kaikki.org data shown on this page ▲]

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "pulls back the curtain",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "pulling back the curtain",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "pulled back the curtain",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "pulled back the curtain",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "pull back the curtain (third-person singular simple present pulls back the curtain, present participle pulling back the curtain, simple past and past participle pulled back the curtain)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              49,
              70
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "2020 December 17, Nathan J. Robinson, “The Sophist and The Magician”, in Current Affairs, archived from the original on 10 Oct 2024:",
          "text": "Understanding how we can be manipulated helps us pull back the curtain on charlatans and can even protect democracy.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To reveal an underlying truth."
      ],
      "id": "en-pull_back_the_curtain-en-verb-g3YIGlPt",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To reveal an underlying truth."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "pull back the curtain"
}

[Show JSON for raw wiktextract data ▼] [Hide JSON for raw wiktextract data ▲]

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "pulls back the curtain",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "pulling back the curtain",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "pulled back the curtain",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "pulled back the curtain",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "pull back the curtain (third-person singular simple present pulls back the curtain, present participle pulling back the curtain, simple past and past participle pulled back the curtain)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English verbs",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "bold_text_offsets": [
            [
              49,
              70
            ]
          ],
          "ref": "2020 December 17, Nathan J. Robinson, “The Sophist and The Magician”, in Current Affairs, archived from the original on 10 Oct 2024:",
          "text": "Understanding how we can be manipulated helps us pull back the curtain on charlatans and can even protect democracy.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To reveal an underlying truth."
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To reveal an underlying truth."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "pull back the curtain"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-03-07 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-03-03 using wiktextract (d146717 and 59dc20b). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.

"pull back the curtain" meaning in English

Verb

Inflected forms