underpull

English

Etymology

From under- +‎ pull.

Noun

underpull (plural underpulls)

1. (engineering) A driver for pumping that has the eccentrics under the gear wheel.
   • 1914, Joseph F. Mueller, The Operative Miller - Volume 19, page 396:

     Am therefore suggesting, that when you have a prospective customer, not to be so exacting, not to require a concrete foundation, neither the underpull and a vent spout leading to the roof .

   • 1918 June, “No. 2 Geared Durnell”, in The Employer: Official Journal of the Oklahoma Employers, volume 3, number 1, page 30:

     Our underpull pumping power is designed to pump wells in any direction.

   • 1943, The Composite Catalog of Oil Field and Pipe Line Equipment, page 2299:

     Fig. 5 —Two-well hook-up in which the Universal Pumping Unit is pumping one of the wells while the second well, equipped with an underpull jack, is being pumped through a pull-rod attached to the Universal Unit walking beam.

2. Synonym of undertow.
   • 1894, Eva Wilder McGlasson Brodhead, Ministers of Grace, page 73:

     "He's got hold of him!" rang out, as the struggling swimmer seemed to snatch at the shoulder of the drowning man. Then an appalled murmur arose. " It's an underpull!"

   • 1901, Richard Jefferies, The Open Air, page 133:

     A white face, blurred and indistinct, seemed to rise up from beneath the rushing bubbles till, just as it was about to jump to the surface, as things do that come up, down it was drawn again by that terrible underpull which has been fatal to so many good swimmers.

   • 2020, Charles Dodd White, How Fire Runs:

     A second later the underpull seized him and he was lost beneath the stone and held there by the force of surging water.

3. (more generally) A downward pull or force.
   • 1981, City Arts Monthly, page 56:

     […] steps stretching the height of the tower carry upward the longings of men who wished to escape the underpull of time and gravity.

   • 2009, Robert Klardon, Gravityball, page 149:

     Stimulating forces tingled more intensely from the lower underpull of gravity.

4. A negative influence.
   • 2002, Amy Carmichael, Gold Cord: The Story of a Fellowship:

     Some of the children are from the best stock of India, but some have everything against them (and the underpull of heredity can tell hardly on a child).

   • 2005, Thomas J. Ferraro, Feeling Italian: The Art of Ethnicity in America, page 105:

     On the other hand, in the mid-tempo swingers and even in the up-tempo anthems, the exhilaration in his voice—"Oh, look at me now!"—has an ironic underpull, the insinuation of his Jersey accent in the midst of that wondrously uptown pronunciation, reflecting both the memory of how tough it was and the fear that at the next roll of the dice you're gonna be back in the gutter: unreasonable perhaps, given his fame and his fortune and his talent, but go tell that to an Italian.

   • 2015, Margaret Visser, The Rituals of Dinner:

     The grotesque unseemliness, even during the “refined” eighteenth century, is sufficient attraction—that, and the eternal secret underpull in all of us: the suspicion that for two pins we might let the wholething slide an "become like animals" too.

5. A secret or indirect influence.
   • 1913, William Riley Halstead, A Cosmic View of Religion, page 33:

     And yet we can not escape from the feeling that very much of what we are has been determined for us by some mysterious underpull, the nature of which we do not always understand and the purposes of which we are dull to interpret.

   • 1972, Helen Wortis, ‎Helen Zunser Wortis, ‎Clara Rabinowitz, The Women's Movement: Social and Psychological Perspectives, page 95:

     This dilemma of the "friendly threesome," and the underpull of tensions that sustain the relationship, is rarely acknowledged, while almost universal recognition is given to its more pronounced version, the eternal triangle.

   • 1985, Michael Bentley, Politics Without Democracy: Great Britain, 1815-1914, page 131:

     Eddying against the stream of rhetoric about protection came an underpull from Dissent a force untested electorally since 1841.

   • 1993, Tracy Hughes, Calloway Corners, page 82:

     She stared over the water, trying to resist the underpull of his deep massage, trying to hold on to the anger slipping away from her like the tension in her shoulders.

   • 2011, Patrick McGuinness, The Last Hundred Days:

     The music and lights pulsed like the inside of a migraine; the drink had an evil underpull.

6. (climbing) A handhold that allows one to pull oneself up from below.
   • 1912, Harold Spender, In Praise of Switzerland, page 158:

     Higher the climb followed the line of least resistance up a succession of slabs, flakes, and cracks, where the ordinary hold was an underpull for the hands and friction for the feet.

   • 1971, Don Whillans, ‎Alick Ormerod, Don Whillans: Portrait of a Mountaineer, page 184:

     Using the icicle as an underpull, I chipped a good jug over the top and made two footholds on the steep slab.

7. The act of pulling (any sense) insufficiently.
   • 1982, Ronald A. Berk, Handbook of Methods for Detecting Test Bias, page 184:

     Algebraically, there may be little difference between underpull where the correct response fails to be attractive to the minority group members for cultural reasons, as discussed above, and overpull that acts for the majority group, attracting them to the correct response for cultural reasons perhaps combined with knowledge.

   • 1998, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Reports, pages 61-180:

     El Paso points out that it does not have an operational balancing agreement with the other pipeline, but rather has a predetermined allocation agreement under which any overpull or underpull by a shipper utilizing the Franklin point is allocated prorata to all parties moving gas through that point .

   • 2007, Ramin Yazdani, Demonstration of Landfill Technology for Peaking Power Potential at Yolo County Central Landfill, page 132:

     During the the daytime the pump is operated for 12 hours in the overpull condition, and during the night it is operated for 12 hours in the underpull condition.

   • 2012, V. C. Patel, R. W. McClendon, J. W. Goodrum, “Color Vision and Artificial Nerual Networks for the Detection of Defects in Poultry Eggs”, in S. Panigrahi, ‎K.C. Ting, editor, Artificial Intelligence for Biology and Agriculture, page 163:

     Overpull occurs when grade A eggs are graded as defective and underpull is when defective eggs are allowed to be included as grade A eggs.

   1. (medicine) Failure to pull a muscle as far as it can contract.
      • 1977, James Kyle, ‎Walter Pye, Pye's Surgical Handicraft, page 282:

        Half an inch (1.25 cm) of shortening due to underpull is far less serious than half an inch of lengthening with slow union due to overpull.

      • 2011, Nicola J. Petty, ‎Ann P. Moore, Neuromusculoskeletal Examination and Assessment:

        Increased length and inhibited stabilizing muscles result in underpull at a motion segment dependent on the normality of its antagonist muscle as well.

Verb

underpull (third-person singular simple present underpulls, present participle underpulling, simple past and past participle underpulled)

1. (transitive) To exert one's influence secretly.
   • a. 1734, Roger North, The Life of the Right Honourable Francis North:

     His Lordship, while he was a Student, and during his Incapacity to practise aboveboard, was contented to underpull, as they call it, and managed diverse Suits for his Country Friends and Relations […]

   • 1896, Edmund Brown Viney Christian, A Short History of Solicitors:

     It may have been that the lower ranks of the apprenticii, in the words of The Compleat Solicitor, underpulled causes during the long term of study then necessary before the rank of utter barrister was attained.

2. To pull (any sense) insufficiently.
   • 1941, The Year Book of Industrial and Orthopedic Surgery, page 236:

     The common failing is to underpull in these early hours because of fear of overpull .

   • 1965, Harry Bouchard, ‎Francis H. Moffitt, Surveying, page 25:

     }The tendency is usually to underpull, rather than to exceed the standard tension.

   • 1980, U.S. Oil Week, page 4:

     DOE regs allow customers to underpull one month and make up for it the next year, so long as it all events out within the year.

   • 1983 April, John McElyea, “Head/Tail Winds”, in Skiing, page 22:

     One point to keep in mind is never to underpull in a headwind.

Adjective

underpull (comparative more underpull, superlative most underpull)

1. Designed to be pulled and mounted on the underside.
   • 1918, Sweet's Architectural Catalog File, page 839:

     One-piece white vitreous china flush pipe cover and white vitreous china bolt caps. White Vitreous china swelled front low down tank with underpull leverl.

   • 1919, The American Architect Specification Manual - Volume 1, page 138:

     […] underpull lever with china handle, elevated, high pressure compound cover ball cock, standard pattern flush valve with 14 " overflow tube, tinned copper float, […]

   • 1921, Cochran-Sargent Company, Plumbing and Heating Supplies, page 169:

     Vitreous China Straight Front Tank with Underpull Lever with China Handle, Elevated High Pressure Compound Lever Ball Cock with Glass Float, Rubber Ball Flush Valve with 114-inch Overflow Pipe, […]