PULL VS APRETAR

When higher stages of language learning are reached, we encounter hurdles we never foresaw at the beginning, when we were dealing with grammatical nuances and syntactical riddles. The lexical uses in the two languages differ at times, and we apply the solutions given by our first language. However, bilinguals have the challenge of managing the uses of Spanish and English. No small feat. Let me give you an example: Pull, "tirar, jalar" in Spanish, as in He pulled the trigger. In Spanish, however, the verb "apretar" to tighten, or press, is used: apretó el gatillo.

Squeeze is also used, although much less. I have found 10,354 examples of pulled the trigger and only 229 of squeezed the trigger.