Pull Out All the Stops

SEELEY LAKE – If Jack from Team A is running neck and neck with Jill from Team B and they are 50 yards from the finish line, Jack’s coach might yell, “C’mon, you can do it. Pull out all the stops.” But why is Jack’s coach yelling about stops, when clearly his intent is for Jack to go, in fact to increase his speed.

The origin of the phrase, pull out all the stops, actually has nothing to do with racing. It has to do with playing a pipe organ.

Miles Hoffman’s “The NPR Classical Music Companion” calls the organ a hybrid instrument, a conjoining of wind and keyboard instruments. The keys and pedals direct air to different pipes. The length of the pipe determines the tone. The longer the pipe, the lower the pitch. The shorter the pipe, the higher the pitch.

An organ also has stops – knobs or buttons that control the airflow. Pulling a knob out allows the air to flow unimpeded through the pipe and increases the volume. Pushing the knob in stops the airflow. So pulling out all the stops at once would produce a loud, full sound.

Hoffman traces the phrase to Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach was famous not only as a composer and organist, he also was an acclaimed organ tester. Hoffman reports that the first thing Bach did when trying out a new organ was literally pull all the stops full out. Bach said by doing so he could tell what kind of “lungs” the organ had, or its maximum capacity.

When the coach tells Jack to pull out all the stops, he is urging him to perform at his maximum capacity.