Other forms: unplugged, unplugging, unplugs
To unplug something is to pull its plug out of the socket. The universal first step in fixing anything electrical.
It is the exact opposite of plugging in, and it belongs beside unhook and unscrew in the family of undoing verbs. The advice to turn it off and on again begins here. There is a good figurative sense about rest, since unplugging for a weekend means going without phones and email. Music borrowed it for unplugged, meaning a performance played on acoustic instruments.
Dutch
plug
English
plug
English, today
unplug
From un- + plug. plug Borrowed from Dutch plug. 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”), German Pflock (“peg”). Possibly akin to Lithuanian plúkti (“to strike, hew”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA