Literal translation
to pull worry
Meaning
to cause worry
Explanation
This expression means to cause worry, to give someone lasting concern. The verb tira carries the senses of pulling, extracting, heading toward, and soucit means worry, concern, but also, curiously, the marigold flower, a homonymy that also exists in French. Here it is clearly the abstract sense of concern that applies: to pull worry means to create or sustain anxiety in someone, as though one literally extracted from the situation a torment to be placed in another's mind. The construction echoes French turns like tirer des larmes or tirer une grimace, where the verb to pull describes a provoked reaction or state appearing in a person. The example given in use, cette histoire, ça me tire souci, illustrates well the common use of the phrase to name a matter, a piece of news, or a situation weighing mentally on whoever lives through or observes it. The register is familiar, used in everyday conversation to express worry without necessarily dramatising it, more a matter of persistent nagging concern than deep anguish.