Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr Downtown
An interesting generational (I guess) difference here. "Pulling permits" has always been very common jargon in the A/E/C and planning/building communities for "[going downtown and] getting permits."
The other sense, of pulling something out of a production line because it's defective or not ready, is perhaps the meaning that comes immediately to mind for a general audience. "Pulled up" seems to me to be a computer-era usage.
As i say, interesting.
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I suspect that both come from common library language. In a library you literally pull on a book you're retrieving an object from a shelf but it's also common language like "Go pull Darwin's 'On the Origin of Species' from the stacks". This language is about obtaining a thing.
On a computer you "pull up" information there's no object involved there's no possession. Sort of like how when you're talking about the information in a book when possession is assumed you would say you "look up" the information.
People in the building/planning communities do the same when they are talking about taking steps to possess / obtain permits they say they are "pulling permits". If they were talking about retrieving information from permits that they have already obtained then they might say "I pulled up the permits and they say..."
It wouldn't make any sense to say I pulled up permits in reference to getting the permits because you can't pull up something that you don't have.