What is your concept of the phrase, "to pull the plug?" Apparently many people here only consider it to mean to turn off the machine that artifically ventilates patients. I read an article today where the author criticized reports that pulling a feeding tube from a patient is "pulling the plug." He thinks it only means to unplug the ventilator.

Well, medically, he is wrong. Feeding tubes are attached to pumps that keep the infusion at a reasonable rate. When you stop a feeding, you must "pull the plug." Beyond that, "pulling the plug" can be quite general, too, can't it? For example, your boss can "pull the plug" on a project or the legislators can "pull the plug" on funding.

Or...is the main use to unplug a ventilator?

I don't know what you call them in the USA, but here the electrical flex terminations that go into a wall-socket are commonly known as "plugs". So if you pull the plug, then the appliance, whatever it may be, goes off.

What Richard said, plus there is the figurative sense as described by Kalleh. I usually think of the phrase as being mainly figurative, and would suggest that one could pull the plug on anything to bring it to an end.

Incidentally, when I use the term in its literal sense, I'll often say "pull the plug out".

To me, "pull the plug" = "terminate."

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To me, "pull the plug" = "terminate."

Right, Asa, but not necessarily a life, right? I just thought the columnist was being narrow-minded to think that "pulling the plug" only refers to unplugging a ventilator. I wrote him an e-mail to that effect, but of course he hasn't replied. I suppose he is too important for that!

The primary meaning of to pull the plug for me is to remove somebody from hospital machines that are keeping them alive. By extension, it can also mean to terminate non-living things like a work project or a chat session. Then, in the right context, it can mean to literally unplug something from an electric socket. For example:

"Why didn't Cathy trip over the extension cord like I did?"

"'Cause she pulled the plug."

World Wide Words has an article on this.

Interesting. Quinion's article points out that one can pull out a plug (in the literal sense, not the figurative one) not only on an electrical devices but also on a hydrolic device: the plug on old fashioned toilet (water closet).

However, Quinion goes on to say, "The Oxford English Dictionary confirms that the phrase was first used in just that sense." I don't read OED that way. There are early cites to a literal pull upon the plug in a WC, but none showing whether the figurative use of "to pull the plug" arose by reference to an electric plug or rather to a WC plug.

Indeed, OED indicates that the figurative sense can be by reference to either type of plug.

plug: 1c. a device designed to be inserted into a suitable socket to establish an electrical connection ... (For to pull the plug see sense 2k.)
2k. In some old types of water-closet, a stopper which kept the water in the pan and was pulled to let the contents fall into the soil pipe. Now Obs. exc. Hist. and in phr. to pull the plug, ... fig. and transf., usu. referring to sudden release or (with allusion to sense 1c) disconnection.

I tend to think of non-medical activities when I hear the term. It's all about context.

Are we rolling? A one, a two, a three, a four...

A mother was washing her baby one night;
The youngest of ten and a delicate mite.
The mother was poor and the baby was thin;
'Twas naught but a skeleton covered with skin.

The mother turned 'round for a soap off the rack.
She was only a moment but when she turned back
Her baby had gone, and in anguish she cried,
"Oh, where has my baby gone?" The angels replied:

Oh, your baby has gone down the plug hole.
Oh, your baby has gone down the plug.
The poor little thing was so skinny and thin,
He should have been washed in a jug, in a jug.

Your baby is perfectly happy;
He won't need a bath anymore.
He's a-muckin' about with the angels above,
Not lost but gone before.

Do you want to do it again?

[Cream. Disraeli Gears. "A Mother's Lament; (trad.)]

Yes, Asa, it is all about context.

I think it is quite ironic that one of the first cites of "pulling the plug" came from Florence Nightingale in Notes on Nursing, considering what it means now.

OK, Kalleh, my strange little mind got to wandering, and I considered how a plug can also be a bung, but pulling a bung produces a flow, whereas pulling a plug, in the sense you mean, stops a flow. Now my little mind's all bunged up!

I believe you Brits use the term in other ways too. Care to elaborate, anyone?

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I think it is quite ironic that one of the first cites of "pulling the plug" came from Florence Nightingale in Notes on Nursing, considering what it means now.

I find that very interesting given how it may be used now. As I'm not really a medical person it's not a context I normally associate with the phrase. To me it has always been a general term to stop something instantly, like disconnecting a power supply. As far as it also being a 'bung' is concerned, if I imagine it as being a plug removed from a bath I tend to then envisage a valuable commodity being drained away as opposed to flow increasing. Perhaps I'm just naturally negative.