plug into
Appearance
English
[edit]Verb
[edit]plug into (third-person singular simple present plugs into, present participle plugging into, simple past and past participle plugged into) (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.
- (figuratively) To join something in the manner of a plug.
- 2022 November 24, Pranshu Verma, “Sam's Club's AI knows how much pumpkin pie you'll eat this holiday”, in Washington Post[1]:
- 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 said. (They declined to give an exact figure.)
- (idiomatic) To become aware of or knowledgeable about.
- 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[2]:
- 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?
- (idiomatic, mathematics) 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.