Is "plugging out" electronic devices an American expression?

Are these valid in American English as opposed to "unplug".

Plug out the charger from the wall.

I plugged out my TV.

I found my radio plugged out.

I started hanging out with some guys of Jamaican descent who were born in Canada and I noticed that they talked about "plugging out" their electronic devices rather than "unplugging" them. Recently I've begun to hear the same expression from non-Jamaicans.

Anyone have any idea how widespread this is?

Kaique

Posted 2019-04-08T17:54:40.543

Reputation: 3 489

90FWIW, I'm an American and I have never heard anyone use this expression. I say "unplug". – Mixolydian – 2019-04-08T19:13:35.570

23Canadian here; I've never heard anyone use the phrase "plugging out" before. It's always "unplug". – Kalmino – 2019-04-08T20:43:02.163

13As an American I have only ever seen it in a UI translated from Chinese by people who learned English outside the US. – Michael Hampton – 2019-04-09T01:22:22.650

21"Plug in" is extremely common; but I've never heard "plug out" used until right now. – JMac – 2019-04-09T11:47:16.620

10Although I have heard the term 'pull the plug out' to remove the plug from a socket and hence 'pull the plug' to stop something electronic, I've never heard of 'plugging out' – Smock – 2019-04-09T13:05:54.600

4Never heard it in Scotland, or on British TV – Mike Brockington – 2019-04-09T16:49:35.307

1American electricians and mechanics do "tag out" connections and machinery to ensure no dangerous voltages or unexpected motion happens while internals are being worked on. Also we "block out" noise or light. There are probably other "-outs" but "plug out" is not among them. I've never heard it. – wistlo – 2019-04-10T17:16:54.180

Answers

Wiktionary defines the expression plug out as Irish:

(Ireland, transitive, colloquial) To unplug; to remove (an electrical device) from its socket.

From The Daily Edge : 13 words you'll never hear outside of Ireland...

Another uniquely Irish phrase is 'to plug out' as in ' plug out the telly'.

user070221

Posted 2019-04-08T17:54:40.543

Reputation: 6 473

15The GloWbE corpus seems to confirm this, but also some other Englishes. 1 relevant example from US, 5 from UK, 10 from Ireland, 4 from India, 2 Bangla Desh, 3 singapore, 3 Jamaica, 1 each from Hong Kong and kenya. None from anywhere else. I have learnt something: I would have said that no native English speaker used this expression. – Colin Fine – 2019-04-08T19:22:22.463

8@ColinFine Does your corpus search make sure it's looking at that as a verb? After all, you may get "take the plug out of the bath", which is something else entirely. – SamBC – 2019-04-08T20:10:00.927

2(I never heard it in Britain, but the UK does include a chunk of Ireland, which may affect the results) – SamBC – 2019-04-08T20:10:45.030

4@SamBC: I told it to restrict it to a verb, but quite a few entries were mis-tagged. There were few enough that I could inspect them individually and exclude the ones with a different structure. – Colin Fine – 2019-04-08T20:41:44.710

1I have very rarely heard it in Britain, but have always known Irish people so it could have been from them (dircetly or indirectly) – Chris H – 2019-04-09T09:01:53.407

Am Irish. Mind blown that other countries don't say 'plug out'. – Colm – 2019-04-26T08:11:20.230

In America, we use the term "unplug", not "plug out"

Kyle Mccoy

Posted 2019-04-08T17:54:40.543

Reputation: 431

Here in South Africa, we say "plug out" too. I am not sure if this is based on the historical European influence, or that in Afrikaans "uit prop" translates to "plug out" really... In Afrikaans, the words make sense - but I can see how it gets a little non-descriptive in English. It sounds like "rock out" (even though not really great form in my opinion either), so "plug out" tends to convey a slangy feel to me. Nevertheless, we do use it commonly here.

Marlon van der Linde

Posted 2019-04-08T17:54:40.543

Reputation: 351

"plug in" is widely used - so "plug out" is a perfectly plausible inverse. – Martin Bonner supports Monica – 2019-04-11T12:30:39.207

@MartinBonner The inverse of "plug in" is really "pull out." I think "plug out" might be an oxymoron since plugging implies inserting. – ArrowCase – 2019-04-11T16:46:59.277

I work in north eastern Ohio, in a community of Amish people, where the first language is Dutch (not European Dutch - this would be Pennsylvania Dutch, or a regional dialect thereof).

Here, I never hear native dutch speakers say "unplug." It's always "plug out."

There are relatively few idioms that are unique to this area, but this is one of those that stood out starkly to me, as I'd never heard this term prior to working in this area.

snomsnomsnom

Posted 2019-04-08T17:54:40.543

Reputation: 301

14Pennsylvania Dutch is not Dutch at all: it's a dialect of German. "Dutch" in this case arose as a corruption of "Deutsch". – Martha – 2019-04-09T17:59:20.267

18@Martha -- European Dutch is also a (different) dialect of German, but with an army and a navy. – Jasper – 2019-04-09T18:49:10.310

@Jasper: chortle. :) – Martha – 2019-04-09T19:47:53.947

6Just out of curiosity: how often do Amish need to "unplug" stuff? To me it feels like this wouldn't be used much anyway, no? – Patrice – 2019-04-10T14:20:02.193

1@Patrice - drain pipes, maybe? – davidbak – 2019-04-10T16:51:29.090

@Patrice, quite a few Amish communities allow the use of electrical equipment in the workplace, but not in the home. – Joe – 2019-04-11T01:13:21.000

2@Patrice, it’s actually much more common than you might think. Many Amish businesses, and many Amish homes, have electrical systems. Many homes are running solar or generator-based systems that might not be supplying a full 120v, but usually it’s 24v or something similar. – snomsnomsnom – 2019-04-11T01:47:33.300

I am from a community in New York speaking English and Yiddish and I can definitely hear myself say "plug out".

I believe this happens because we tend to express things in English the same way we would in express it in Yiddish. There are many more examples where we do it.

Yiddish is also somewhat derived from German.

isaace

Posted 2019-04-08T17:54:40.543

Reputation: 221

"somewhat" is a bit of an understatement. It's not much further from High German than Plattdeutsch or Schweizerdeutsch. I speak German at A2 level at least, and went to a lecture where they played Undzer Shtetl brent - I had to ask if it was German or Yiddish. – Martin Bonner supports Monica – 2019-04-11T12:39:23.897

@MartinBonner agree, it's just that we mix in a lot of English and hebrew in everyday conversations. But you are right, I could read German and understand a lot of what I read. – isaace – 2019-04-11T13:26:45.710

I came across this phrasing in a Supermicro server's IPMI Virtual Media interface. It looks like this:

The plug in/out buttons could easily say "connect/disconnect" and have exactly the same meaning. Company is based in California, USA, but I do not know where their IPMI interface coders are located.

Criggie

Posted 2019-04-08T17:54:40.543

Reputation: 719

Nice! My next question is: what is supposed to be conveyed by the second line in the history that says "Stop!!"? – davidbak – 2019-04-10T16:53:01.047

@davidbak its a status output area - I connected an ISO fie to a virtual CD drive, disconnected it, read "plug out" and remembered this question, then reconnected the file so the button was not greyed-out before taking screenshot. Is!! very!! enthusiastic!! OK!! – Criggie – 2019-04-10T19:46:34.000

1For a UI like this, "Plug Out" provides symmetry with 'Plug In", but it is not necessarily indicative of how people actually speak. – Glen Yates – 2019-04-11T15:12:13.453