Englishpull rank
Meaning: To take advantage of one's superior position (one's rank).
Example: “When we couldn't agree, the captain pulled rank.”
Origin: Military, and American slang of roughly the Second World War period. "Pull" carries the sense it has in pulling strings — exerting something held in reserve rather than performing an action outright — and what gets pulled here is the formal authority a person holds independently of the argument at hand. That is the whole of the criticism the phrase makes. Rank genuinely does settle questions in a military hierarchy, and using it is not improper in itself; but pulling rank describes reaching for it after failing to convince, which concedes that the position could not be carried on its merits. The phrase is therefore almost never used by the person doing it, and almost always by someone reporting it afterward.
More English idioms
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