plug

UK/plʌɡ/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Australia/plɐɡ/

plug noun: a pronged connecting device which fits into a mating socket, especially an electrical one. Also the ellipsis of spark plug.

Image: Gab Mittagong, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

plug (plural plugs)

A pronged connecting device which fits into a mating socket, especially an electrical one.
- I pushed the plug back into the electrical socket and the lamp began to glow again.
1. (broadly) An electric socket: wall plug.
Any piece of wood, metal, or other substance used to stop or fill a hole.
- Pull the plug out of the tub so it can drain.
Synonyms:

bung, dowel, stopper, stopple
(US, countable, uncountable) A flat oblong cake of cured and pressed tobacco; the tobacco that constitutes it.
- Near-synonym: chewing tobacco
- He preferred a plug to snuff.
Synonyms:

chewing tobacco
(US, slang) A high, tapering silk hat.
(US, slang) A worthless horse.
- That sorry old plug is ready for the glue factory!
Synonyms:

bum, dobbin, hack, jade, nag
(dated) Any worn-out or useless article.
(dated, slang) A book that fails to sell.
- Stack all new and fresh, composed of the fast-selling standard books only — no old plugs or unsalable books whatever.1886, The Publishers Weekly, volume 29, page 25
- Many New York booksellers promoted the impression that Quaritch had sent only 'plugs' (i.e. unsaleable books).1997, The Book Collector, volume 46, page 184
A block of wood let into a wall to afford a hold for nails.
(slang) A promotion (act of promoting) of a product (such as a book, film or play) or other thing, concept, etc, for example during an interview or a commercial.
- During the interview, the author put in a plug for his latest novel.
- She used her televised tour of the zoo to work in another plug for conservation.
A body of once molten rock that hardened in a volcanic vent. Usually round or oval in shape.
- Pressure built beneath the plug in the caldera, eventually resulting in a catastrophic explosion of pyroclastic shrapnel and ash.
A type of lure consisting of a rigid, buoyant or semi-buoyant body and one or more hooks.
- The fisherman cast the plug into a likely pool, hoping to catch a whopper.
A small seedling grown in a tray from expanded polystyrene or polythene filled usually with a peat or compost substrate.

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A growth of protoplasm that closes the pore openings in the cells of certain algae.
A short cylindrical piece of jewellery commonly worn in larger-gauge body piercings, especially in the ear.

Synonyms:

earspool
(slang) A drug dealer.
- He saw me catch a trap and leave the house of a drug dealer. That's why he targeted me. He could have easily blown my ass off right then and there for lying, but for some reason he didn't. He just left. I biked back to my plug's spot and told him […]2017, Gucci Mane, Neil Martinez-Belkin, The Autobiography of Gucci Mane, page 32
(slang, African-American Vernacular) A trusted connection; someone who provides illicit goods and resources.
A branch from a water-pipe to supply a hose.
A standard, modular fuselage component that can be added or removed.
- Add front and aft closures to the fuselage midsection. Addition or subtraction of fuselage plugs, to a maximum of five rows, conveniently distributed on each side of wing, is possible.2010, Ajoy Kumar Kundu, Aircraft Design, page 165

Verb

plug (third-person singular simple present plugs, present participle plugging, simple past and past participle plugged)

(transitive) To stop with a plug; to make tight by stopping a hole.
- He attempted to plug the leaks with some caulk.
Synonyms:

stop
(transitive) To promote (something, especially a product or service); to mention (something) as if promoting or advertising it.
- The main guest on the show just kept plugging his latest movie: it got so tiresome.
- Kennedy went on nationwide speaking tour to plug environmental conservation.
(informal, intransitive) To persist or continue with something.
- Near-synonym: plug away
- Keep plugging at the problem until you find a solution.
Synonyms:

plug away, keep up
(slang, transitive) To shoot (someone) with a bullet.
- I am awfully glad that you kept your nerve and plugged him; it would have been better if you could have nailed him through the right shoulder, which would not have killed him...1884, H. Rider Haggard, The Witch's Head
Synonyms:

cap, pop, bust a cap, ventilate
(slang, transitive) To have sex with; to penetrate sexually.
- Near-synonyms: peg, rail
- I’d love to plug him with my strap-on.
Synonyms:

peg, rail, drill
(slang, transitive) To ingest a drug rectally.

Synonyms:

boof

Also used as

plug is also the ellipsis of spark plug.

plug is also the ellipsis of fireplug.

plug meaning in Tagalog, Arabic, Malay and Indonesian

plug in Arabic

electric connecting device: قَابِس qābis, فِيشَة fīša
hole filler: بُوجِيه būjīh, دِسَام disām, سِدَاد sidād, سِدَادَة sidāda, سِطَام siṭām, صِمّة ṣimma

plug in Indonesian

electric connecting device: steker, tusuk kontak, colokan, pencolok
hole filler: sumbat

More languagesFewer languages

plug in Persian: فیش fiš, دوشاخه do-šâxe
plug in Thai: ปลั๊ก bplák, เต้าเสียบ dtâo-sìiap
plug in Vietnamese: phích, đầu cắm, đầu cắm điện
plug in Myanmar: ပလတ် pa.lat, အဆို့ a.hcui.

Examples of plug in a sentence

He preferred plug to snuff.
I just wanted to […] give a plug to Disney World […]1956 November 11, 22:37 from the start, in Franklin Heller, director, What's My Line?, season 8, episode 11, spoken by Bennett Cerf:
He [Mike Skinner] treats the gig as an opportunity repeatedly to plug the after-party, where he will be DJing.2019 January 26, Kitty Empire [pseudonym], “The Streets review – the agony and ecstasy of a great everyman”, in Katharine Viner, editor...

All 40 example sentences with plug

Synonyms of plug

18 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of plug

Forms of plug

Noun
plural	plugs
Verb
third-person singular present	plugs
present participle	plugging
past participle	plugged
past	plugged

Past tense of plug: plugged

Plural of plug: plugs

Origin of plug

From Dutch plug, from Middle Dutch plugge (“peg, plug”), from Old Dutch *pluggi, from Proto-West Germanic *plugi. Further origin unknown. Possibly from Proto-Germanic *plugjaz, but the word seems originally restricted to northern continental West Germanic. Perhaps ultimately from the same source as Dutch plag (“cut-out sod”), itself considered to be from a substrate. Compare German Low German Plüg, Norwegian plug (“peg, wedge”, probably borrowed from Middle Low German), German Pflock (“peg”, restricted to Central German and phonetically divergent). Possibly akin to Lithuanian plúkti (“to strike, hew”).

Words formed from plug

Phrases with plug

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Words that rhyme with plug

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Questions about plug

What does plug mean?: Plug means a pronged connecting device which fits into a mating socket, especially an electrical one.
What is plug in Tagalog?: Plug in Tagalog is sumpal. See Plug meaning in Tagalog.
How do you use plug in a sentence?: He preferred plug to snuff.
What part of speech is plug?: Plug can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce plug?: Plug is pronounced /plʌɡ/ (UK).
What is the plural of plug?: The plural of plug is plugs.

Words near plug in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: plug (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-plug.ogg.

Cite this entry: “plug.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/plug. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.