How the absence of a seemingly inconsequential word can make a big difference in what we want to say!
I really hate to be a spoilsport, but I think the web edition of a leading Metro Manila broadsheet pulled a boner recently in this lead sentence to
a controversial news story: “Senate President Juan Ponce-Enrile
pulled a surprise on Wednesday when he announced his irrevocable resignation from his post.” (italicization mine)
The use of the verb phrase “pulled a surprise” in that sentence is grammatically faulty; what should have been used instead is the phrasal verb “pulled off a surprise,” an idiomatic expression that means “to succeed in doing something difficult, unexpected, or challenging.”
So, that lead sentence should have been worded this way: “Senate President Juan Ponce-Enrile
pulled off a surprise Wednesday when he announced his irrevocable resignation from his post.” Without the preposition “off,” that phrasal verb is reduced to “pull a surprise,” a literal phrase that means “to stretch the surprise or to draw it apart.” This is obviously not what that sentence intended to say.
Even without “off,” however, “pull a surprise” could work properly if it’s followed by an object of the preposition, as in this variation of that faulty lead sentence: “Senate President Juan Ponce-Enrile
pulled a surprise on his fellow senators Wednesday when he announced his irrevocable resignation from his post.” Here, a different idiomatic expression is used, “pull a surprise on someone,” which uses “his fellow senators” as object of the preposition “on.”
By the way, “to pull a boner,” the idiom I used to describe the omission of “off” in the figurative expression at issue here, means “to do something stupid or silly.” On second thought, that’s too harsh for that act of omission. In fairness to that newspaper, the literal phrase “made a mistake” would have sufficed in plain and simple English.
