APAD: Pull out all the stops

Meaning:

   Make every possible effort.

 

Background:

   The popular belief is that this phrase derives from the manner of

   construction of pipe organs. These instruments have stops to control the air

   flow through the pipes and pulling them out increases the musical volume.

   This seems to be the type of casual easy answer that is the hallmark of folk

   etymology. In this case, the popular belief isn't a fallacy but is in fact

   correct.

 

   Prior to the introduction of pipe organs the word `stop' had, in a musical

   context, been used to mean `note' or `key'. That usage is recorded as early

   as the late 16th century, as in this example from George Gascoigne's satire

   The Steele Glas, 1576:

 

     "But sweeter soundes, of concorde, peace, and loue, Are out of tune, and

     iarre in euery stoppe."

 

   Of course, `notes' and `keys' can't be pulled out. The word `stop' later came

   to be used for the knobs that control the flow of air in pipe organs, by

   pushing them in or, more to the point here, pulling them out.

 

   The first person to have used the phrase in a figurative, that is, non-organ

   related, sense appears to have been Matthew Arnold, in Essays in Criticism,

   1865:

 

     "Knowing how unpopular a task one is undertaking when one tries to pull out

     a few more stops in that... somewhat narrow-toned organ, the modern

     Englishman"

 

- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]

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Last Friday, New York Mayor Mamdani "pulled out all the stops" and made a pitch

to President Trump in the White House. He proposed a 12,000 housing-unit project

at the cost of $21 billion at a rail site in Queens. The idea had been floating

around for the past 20 years, some say.