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Reader question: Please explain “pulling her leg”, as in this multiple-choice question below. The correct answer is (b). Why not (c)? Tom told Andrea that giant turtles had escaped from the city zoo and were eating only left-handed people. It wasn’t until she saw the smirk on his face that Andrea noticed he was just pulling her leg. (a) trying to hurt her; (b) fooling her; (c) making fun of her; (d) trying to make her fall My comments: Answer (c) is not the perfect answer here – because of context. If the question is simply “what does the idiom ‘pulling her leg’ mean?” then you could say (c) is also, more or less, a correct answer. To pull one’s leg, you see, is to play a practical joke on someone. If a classmate, say, moves up the aisle and begins to walk by you towards the blackboard as the teacher’s bidding, and you suddenly stick out a foot to trip him or her, you are literally pulling their leg – tripping them so that they may fall and make a fool of themselves in front of class. Or making a fool of yourself if they injured themselves because of fall, in which case the teacher will not let you off easily for making a scene in class (and hurting a fellow student in the process). Anyways, figuratively speaking, to pull someone’s leg is to play such a joke on them, tell them something that is not true in order to deceive them and make people laugh. Usually the joke is light-hearted, as is the case in the top example. Tom told Andrea an apocryphal tale (a story that is not true) to fool her. If Andrea were gullible enough to believe him, Tom would then reveal that he made it all up just to deceive her and both of them can then share a hearty laugh about it together. That’s all, you see. All good fun. Nothing sinister. | 
