Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
a. Designed to be plugged into an electrical power outlet or circuit. alt. Designed to be plugged into an electrical power outlet or circuit. n. (context computing English) A computer program module or device that interacts with another to add a specific function, or to support a specific file format or device.
Wikipedia
In computing, a plug-in (or plugin, add-in, addin, add-on, addon, or extension) is a software component that adds a specific feature to an existing computer program. When a program supports plug-ins, it enables customization. The common examples are the plug-ins used in web browsers to add new features such as search-engines, virus scanners, or the ability to use a new file type such as a new video format. Well-known browser plug-ins include the Adobe Flash Player, the QuickTime Player, and the Java plug-in, which can launch a user-activated Java applet on a web page to its execution on a local Java virtual machine.
A theme or skin is a preset package containing additional or changed graphical appearance details, achieved by the use of a graphical user interface (GUI) that can be applied to specific software and websites to suit the purpose, topic, or tastes of different users to customize the look and feel of a piece of computer software or an operating system front-end GUI (and window managers).
Plug-in is the term used for the add-on files used to modify the Escape Velocity series of games by Ambrosia Software. They are similar to what is now often referred to as a " mod" for other games, but that term was not common when Escape Velocity was first created, and in any case the Macintosh development community generally prefers clearer and more accessible terminology. Another difference in the terminology is that while ‘mods” often involve a certain amount of reverse-engineering of the game engine (since developers prefer to sell their own expansion packs), plug-ins are specifically authorised and facilitated by the developers.
Plug-ins are collected on the official web sites for the Escape Velocity games (or, of course, can be downloaded from a plug-in creator’s own site) and are installed by placing them in the ‘Plug-ins’ folder within the game folder. The effects of the plug-in will be active so long as the game is run with the file in the correct folder.
The term plug-in, plug in or plugin may refer to any of the following:
Usage examples of "plug-in".
Baths of salt and percolating streams of micro-elements, genomic plug-ins, bilayer diffusion circuits and protein gradients, syncretic information systems.
The chair was a plug-in jobbie with a footrest that went up and down to offer support for the varicosely inclined and a vibrating doodad built into the seat for those who were otherwise inclined.
He had a street bike, a plug-in computer, and a pet microsaur, a cat-sized tyrannosaur in purple funfur.
As it is, users are likely to respond with some trepidation to the need to install plug-ins and to the avalanche of information their single, innocuous, mouse click generates.
There were many separate hives of activity, each with its own noise--radios tuned in to the BBC World Service, Walkmans with plug-in speakers that thundered out folk, rap, and heavy metal.
And you scored oS Clas Heine man and all those wire-brained plug-in artists .
At one of the tables set back from the pool sat Richard's father, wrapped in a bulging, fuzzy terrycloth robe, flip-flops on his white feet, simultaneously eating a club sandwich and wheeling and dealing on the plug-in telephone in his other hand.
A helmet hung over the control column, trailing its intercom plug-in wire.
JAPES (Jason's Automatic Photo Enhancing System) was a specialized plug-in program module I'd designed, which combined many of the standard photographic enhancement techniques into a single complex operation controlled partly by me and partly by a learning expert system.
The plug-in units had a wire associated with them and each panel was set up to do a different mathematical function.
One had a parallel port ctor, the other a phone-style plug-in jack.
However, normal personal assists didn’t come with a causal channel plug-in, especially one with a ninety-light-year reach and five petabits of bandwidth.
Interoperability issues (numerous formats and readers) probably requires software and hardware plug-ins to render a smooth and transparent user interface.
Racks of flak jackets and tottering towers of ‘toolkits’ and pornographic plug-ins cluttered the street.
All of the life support plug-ins, instrumentation, direct links to the cortex were established, and he began to see better than ever, hear better than ever, and feel a little like superman.