plug
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "plug", 4-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "plug" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "plug" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
plug is aEnglishnoun. It means: A pronged connecting device which fits into a mating socket, especially an electrical one. Pronounced /plʌɡ/. It ranks #5,726 in English word frequency. Often confused with PU and put.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | plug |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /plʌɡ/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #5,726 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for plug is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /plʌɡ/. Corpus data places it at rank #5,726 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 20 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 6 documented wrong-spelling variants for plug, with forms such as "lpug", "plgu", and "pllug". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "PU", "put", "pub", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: 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. … Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is plug, spelled P-L-U-G, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A pronged connecting device which fits into a mating socket, especially an electrical one.
- 2A pronged connecting device which fits into a mating socket, especially an electrical one.
- 3Any piece of wood, metal, or other substance used to stop or fill a hole.
- 4A flat oblong cake of pressed tobacco.
- 5A high, tapering silk hat.
- 6A worthless horse.
- 7Any worn-out or useless article.
- 8A book that fails to sell.
- 9A block of wood let into a wall to afford a hold for nails.
- 10A 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.
- 11A body of once molten rock that hardened in a volcanic vent. Usually round or oval in shape.
- 12A type of lure consisting of a rigid, buoyant or semi-buoyant body and one or more hooks.
- 13A small seedling grown in a tray from expanded polystyrene or polythene filled usually with a peat or compost substrate.
- 14A growth of protoplasm that closes the pore openings in the cells of certain algae.
- 15A short cylindrical piece of jewellery commonly worn in larger-gauge body piercings, especially in the ear.
- 16A drug dealer.
- 17A branch from a water-pipe to supply a hose.
- 18A standard, modular fuselage component that can be added or removed.
- 19Ellipsis of spark plug.
- 20Ellipsis of fireplug (“fire hydrant”).
Etymology
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”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: lpug,plgu,pllug,plugg,pplug,pulg
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for plug
Misspelling Variants of "plug"
Frequency rank: #5,726 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter P in our English index: