pull the plug

1. 1.

   prevent from happening or continuing

   “The government pulled the plug on spending”

   Broaderdiscontinue

Questions about pull the plug

What does pull the plug mean?

pull the plug means "prevent from happening or continuing".

Is pull the plug a common word?

pull the plug is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.