[Ads-l] "pulls a leg, as he calls it" & "pulling a leg"

[Stephen Goranson]

Last week I commented on Anatoly Liiberman's Oxford Etymologist blog post "On a limb":


  1.
16th April 2025
On pulling a leg. The OED’s 1852 cite is “pulling a leg, or what is generally known and called getting it on a stretch.” If a leg is a support–a leg to stand on–stretching might imply stretching the truth.
That 1852 cite is from an account of a naval voyage to the Arctic. And sailors were known to “get it on a stretch”–it being a rope or line. So. maybe the expression had a naval origin.

As to searching that, well, I'm just, as it were, getting my sea legs.
Here's a puzzle from Bulwer Lytton's 1846 novel, Lucretia, Or, Children of the Night, vol. I p. 205:
 Honest yeoman , you will not be refused . He scratches his rough head,  pulls a leg , as he calls it , when the clerk leans over the counter , and asks to see " Muster Mawnering hisself . " The clerk points to the little office - room of the new junior partner , who has brought £ 10,000 and a clear head to ...
What does "pulls a leg" mean here. His leg, clerk's leg, why as he calls it (unusual phrase),one leg only, stands, pulls up gumption.....?
Stephen G.

https://books.google.com/books?id=efcdAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA205&dq=%22pulls+a+leg%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjRstSLlvOMAxV738kDHZspFZUQuwV6BAgJEAg#v=onepage&q=%22pulls%20a%20leg%22&f=false




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