I was asked this intriguing grammar question over a decade ago by a former Canada-based Filipino reader—I’ll just use his initials B.C. to avoid compromising him in any way after all these years—but I must admit that the sense of outrage in his question still can make my temples throb in a mild tizzy.
The question: “I’m an avid reader of your column and I’m just curious and bothered. Recently, giant blue billboards have materialized touting a (Philippine telecommunication company’s) new wireless Internet offering. It says ‘WIRELESS INTERNET. JUST PLUG IT!’ and it shows a little contraption with a short wire and an electrical plug attached to its end. The company has doubtless spent lots of money for this campaign, judging by the number, the prominence, and—as I have already said—the sheer size of those billboards.
“Please tell me: Doesn’t ‘Just plug it!’ mean
‘Barahan mo’ as in ‘Plug that leak’? Shouldn’t it say ‘Just plug it in!’ as in
‘Ikabit mo!’ or
‘Isaksak mo!’?
“Am I wrong or has that company committed a gigantic grammar blunder?”
Here’s my reply to that question: Dear B.C.:
Let’s evaluate this matter starting from its grammatical roots.
As a stand-alone verb, “plug” may either be transitive or intransitive. According to my trusty digital
Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary, “plug” in its transitive sense can mean: (1) to stop, make tight, or secure by inserting a plug; (2) to shoot with a bullet; and (3) to advertise or publicize insistently. As a transitive verb, of course, “plug” needs an object to function properly, as in “Plug that leak!”
In its intransitive sense, on the other hand, “plug” can mean: (1) to become plugged (here, it usually takes the form of the phrasal verb “plug up,” as in “The pipe got
plugged up”; (2) to work persistently, as in “He
plugged away at the calculus problem”; and (3) to fire shots, as in “The shooter
plugged on until his bullets ran out.” The intransitive “plug” doesn’t take an object at all.
Note that none of the meanings above applies to the sense intended by those billboards of that telecommunication company. Instead, the meaning they convey is that of the phrasal verb “plug in,” which either means “to attach or connect to an electric outlet” (transitive sense) or “to establish an electric circuit by inserting a plug” (intransitive sense). In both cases, the preposition “in” is integral to the phrasal verb; without it, that phrasal verb reverts to the stand-alone verb “plug” in the sense of “plugging a leak or hole.”
It is therefore evident that the billboard statement “WIRELESS INTERNET. JUST PLUG IT!” is semantically flawed, and I think you’ve got a good basis for thinking that phrased this way, “JUST PLUG IT!” actually means
“Barahan mo!” or, in English, “Plug that leak!” (in the sense of the first definition of the transitive “plug” given earlier). And I agree with your suggestion that the grammatically correct way to say it is “JUST PLUG IT IN!” as in
“Ikabit mo lang!” or
“Isaksak mo lang!”
(I think Sattinger’s Law applies to this situation: “It works better if you
plug it in.” This is as quoted in a humorous vein by Lawrence J. Peter in his 1973 book
The Peter Prescription: How to Make Things Go Right.)
But to spare that telecommunications company the big trouble of dismantling and redoing all those huge billboards, it may want to consider this no-fuss, low-expense, simple-paint-over grammatical alternative: replace the pronoun “IT” in that slogan with the preposition “IN,” so the slogan will read as follows: “WIRELESS INTERNET. JUST PLUG IN!” Indeed, I have a feeling that this was probably what the advertising writer probably had in mind in the first place.
Let’s just hope that advertising license or literary license won’t be invoked as a defense for this shaky usage of “JUST PLUG IT!” We have freedom of speech, of course, but it always pays to phrase ourselves beyond reproach. As one of my favorite English-usage websites proclaims in its homepage, “A society is generally as lax as its language.”
This essay first appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the March 8, 2008 issue of The Manila Times
, ©2008 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
