Pull up means to arrive somewhere and stop, about a car, a bus or a driver: The taxi pulled up outside. The second meaning is to move something closer or higher: pull up a chair, pull up your socks. The exercise on a bar is related to it too, but it's a noun: do pull-ups.
Want to use pull up in conversation?
Write a sentence — we'll show the mistakes right away and suggest how to say it more naturally.
The check is taking longer than usual. Your feedback will appear here automatically.
pull up (at/outside + place); pull up + a chair/your socks; pull it up; do pull-ups
- A black car pulled up outside the office, and two visitors got out.
- Pull up a chair and join us, we're just planning the weekend trip.
- Every morning before work, I do ten pull-ups in the park.
What changed
First versionI can pull up fifteen times now.
RevisionI can do fifteen pull-ups now.
Pull up can look like the verb for the exercise, but in English the exercise is the noun pull-ups with the verb do: do fifteen pull-ups. Without an object, the verb pull up is more likely to be understood as “arrived and stopped”.
Pull up and pull over are both about stopping a car. Pull up means to arrive at the right place and stop: The bus pulled up at the stop. Pull over means to move to the side of the road, often because the police told you to: The officer told him to pull over.
Your turn
The bus ___ at the stop, and the doors opened.
Show the answer
pulled up — The doors opened, so the bus had arrived at the stop and stopped: pulled up. Pulled out means “drove away”, and open doors don't fit that situation.
Describe a time someone met you or gave you a lift by car. Say where the car stopped and what happened next.
My brother pulled up outside the station at six, and we drove straight to our parents' house.
Learn to use new words without mistakes
Write phrases with the words you are learning. LetsWords shows mistakes in usage and grammar, suggests corrections and explains them, and review helps the words stick.