pull through
Học thuậtThân thiện
Definition
- Verb (Intransitive):
- To recover from a serious illness, injury, or difficult situation; to survive a crisis.
- Verb (Transitive):
- To help someone recover from a serious illness, injury, or difficult situation; to bring someone safely through a crisis.
Usage
- Intransitive: Used when the subject is the person or entity that survives or recovers. It is often followed by an adverb or prepositional phrase (e.g., 'pull through eventually', 'pull through the crisis').
- Transitive: Used when the subject is the agent (e.g., a doctor, treatment, support) that enables the survival or recovery of the object (the patient or person in difficulty). The structure is 'pull [someone/something] through'.
Examples
- Intransitive Verb:
- The doctors say she is very weak, but they expect her to pull through.
- It was a tough recession, but our company managed to pull through.
- Transitive Verb:
- The new medical treatment pulled him through the worst of the disease.
- Her friendship and encouragement pulled me through that difficult time.
Advanced Usage
- "to pull through (something)": To survive or endure a specific adversity.
- He pulled through the operation better than expected.
- Often used in contexts of medical recovery or overcoming significant hardship, implying a struggle.
Variants and Related Words
- Pull-through (noun): Less common, can refer to the act of surviving or a device for cleaning a gun barrel.
- Survive (verb): A more general synonym for continuing to live or exist.
- Recover (verb): Often focuses more on the return to health or normal state after illness.
Synonyms
- Intransitive: Survive, recover, come through, make it, get better.
- Transitive: Save, rescue, bring through, see (someone) through.
Related Phrasal Verbs
- Come through: Similar meaning of surviving a difficult experience, often used intransitively.
- He came through the heart attack with no lasting damage.
- See through (something): To continue with a difficult task until it is finished. (Note: Different from 'see someone through', which means to support someone during a hard time).
- She was determined to see the project through.
Related Idioms
- Turn the corner: To begin to improve after a difficult period, especially an illness.
- The patient is turning the corner and should pull through.
- Out of the woods: No longer in danger or difficulty.
- The doctor said he's not out of the woods yet, but he's likely to pull through.
Verb
- bring into safety
- We pulled through most of the victims of the bomb attack
- continue in existence after (an adversity, etc.)
- He survived the cancer against all odds