pull the plug
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Meaning · English
Close a venture that is losing money or has no prospects of success.
Where it’s used:
Used
Business & corporate jargon
Examples
She had also considered that Vaclav Trefusis would eventually get tired enough to stretch his authority and pull the plug anyway, listing his Dreamers as acceptable losses.
he had pulled the plug on printed circuits,
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Imported from Wikipedia “List of business terms” (CC BY-SA 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-29), pending review. Figurative class: Metaphor (PIE-English corpus, CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-31).
Common questions
What does “pull the plug” mean?
Close a venture that is losing money or has no prospects of success.
Is “pull the plug” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.