Plugging

How to spell plugging

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce plugging

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does plugging mean?

1. verbStopping up or sealing a hole, gap, or leak by filling it.
2. verbRepeatedly mentioning or publicising something to promote it.
3. verbWorking at something steadily and persistently despite slow progress.

Plugging in a sentence

• The plumber spent an hour plugging the leak under the sink.

• The author kept plugging her new novel on every radio show.

• She is plugging away at her tax return all weekend.

• Plugging the cracks in the wall kept the cold draught out.

• The company is plugging its latest phone in every advert.

• He kept plugging along with the report until it was finished.

Where does plugging come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

This is the present participle of the verb 'plug', which English borrowed in the sixteenth or seventeenth century from Dutch and Low German 'plugge', a word for a wooden peg or bung used to stop up a hole. The original sense was thoroughly practical: a plug was something you hammered or wedged into an opening to seal it, much as a cork stops a bottle. From that concrete meaning the verb grew several modern branches, including the electrical 'plug in' of the late nineteenth century and the informal sense of 'plugging' a product, that is, repeatedly mentioning it to promote it. There is also the dogged sense of 'plugging away' at a task, which pictures someone steadily working a hole shut bit by bit. The spelling trap lives entirely in the suffix: because 'plug' ends in a single consonant after a short stressed vowel, that g must double before -ing, giving 'plugging' rather than the incorrect single-g 'pluging'.

How the word is built

• plug (stopper/connector)
• -g- (doubled consonant after a short stressed vowel)
• -ing (present participle)