Word.ws English Dictionary

plug into

plug into verb: to connect an electric device into something using a plug.

Verb

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

  1. (ditransitive) To connect an electric device into something using a plug.
    • I spent ages trying to fix my computer, before realizing that it wasn't plugged into the wall.
  2. (ditransitive, figuratively) To join something in the manner of a plug.
    • Those data points, and others, plug into an artificial intelligence model they’ve made. It spits out recommendations to each store leader, such as how many pies need to be on-hand in their shops by the hour. Last year, Sam’s Club sold enough pumpkin pies to fill up 450 football fields, officials...2022 November 24, Pranshu Verma, “Sam's Club's AI knows how much pumpkin pie you'll eat this holiday”, in Washington Post
  3. (ditransitive, idiomatic) To become aware of or knowledgeable about.
    • Environmental education is just now grappling with this: how to enable a populace that will change jobs and locations frequently to plug into what is ecologically important in preserving whatever landscape it finds itself in?1997 October 24, Tom Horton, “Michener's 'Chesapeake' revisited Novel: While not a masterpiece, the book enables readers to plug into what is ecologically important.”, in The Baltimore Sun
  4. (ditransitive, idiomatic) To replace a variable with a number in order to solve an equation.
    • If you know two sides of a right triangle, you can find the third by plugging them into the Pythagorean Theorem.

Forms of plug into

third-person singular presentplugs into
present participleplugging into
past participleplugged into
pastplugged into

Questions about plug into

What does plug into mean?
Plug into means to connect an electric device into something using a plug.
What part of speech is plug into?
Plug into is a verb.
What is the past tense of plug into?
The past tense of plug into is plugged into.

Words near plug into in the dictionary

  1. plug door
  2. plug doors
  3. plug hat
  4. plug hats
  5. plug in
  6. plug into
  7. plug nickel
  8. plug nickels
  9. plug out
  10. plug point
  11. plug rod

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: plug into (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.

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