Bill had recently pulled the pin after a distinguished career at the US Customs Service where he ended up as the assistant special agent in change of the Los Angeles office.
Could you tell me what in God’s name “pull the pin” means? I looked everywhere and came up empty.
I entertained the idea that it meant “to retire”, but it doesn’t jibe with the rest of the sentence where “he ended up as…”, because if he had retired, he wouldn’t be the special agent, would he?
Bill had recently put an end to his distinguished career at the US Service Customs… – he didn’t retire.
I believe pull the pin and the more commonly used idiom pull the plug (on something) mean the same thing, and that is: to end a project, program, relationship because of lack of further interest, funds, success etc.
If I go back some 50+ years and in my case, that’s easy, I recall part of my military service training involved throwing a grenade. Now, I was never keen on this but the theory was that before you threw the wretched thing, you had to pull the pin from the top and then immediately throw it and within a limited time it would explode. In your context I would suggest it seems to mean that this is a final act to complete or as you have suggested, ‘retire’. To conclude my sorry anecdote, I have to tell you that in view of my deplorable ‘skill at arms’, I was allowed to practise on the dummy grenade but not on a live one.
Thanks everybody,
Especially you, Alan, for such a colourful story. When I was in the military, we too studied hand grenades. Our drill sergeant explained to us in no uncertain terms that we should pull the pin prior to pitching a grenade at the enemy. But we didn’t get to throw even dummy grenades, only sheer theory on grenade flinging was drilled into our head, which was quite boring, I’d much rather have thrown a live grenade.
