means To exert force on something in order to move it toward you, or figuratively to attract or draw something in.

from From Old English 'pullian,' meaning to pluck or draw, with cousins scattered across the Germanic languages. Its older flavor was rougher than ours — to pluck a feather, snatch wool, tug something loose — and over centuries the snatching softened into the steady, toward-you drag we know now. The magnetic sense (a person's 'pull,' having 'pull' with someone) is a much later metaphor riding on that same physical tug.