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explore

verbnouncommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ɪkˈsplɔː//
  • United States//ɪkˈsploɹ//
  • //ɪkˈsplo(ː)ɹ//
  • //ɪkˈsploə//

To examine or investigate something systematically.

verb

  1. 1

    obsoleteTo seek for something or after someone.

  2. 2

    To examine or investigate something systematically.

    The committee has been exploring alternative solutions to the problem at hand.

    Bats host many high-profile viruses that can infect humans, including severe acute respiratory syndrome and Ebola. A recent study explored the ecological variables that may contribute to bats’ propensity to harbor such zoonotic diseases by comparing them with another order of common reservoir hosts: rodents.

  3. 3

    To travel somewhere in search of discovery.

    It was around that time that the expedition began exploring the Arctic Circle.

  4. 4

    To examine diagnostically.

  5. 5

    To (seek) experience first hand.

    It is normal for a boy of this age to be exploring his sexuality.

  6. 6

    To be engaged exploring in any of the above senses.

    He was too busy exploring to notice his son needed his guidance.

  7. 7

    To wander without any particular aim or purpose.

    The boys explored all around till cold and hunger drove them back to the campfire one by one.

    They stayed together during three dances, went out on to the terrace, explored wherever they were permitted to explore, paid two visits to the buffet, and enjoyed themselves much in the same way as if they had been school-children surreptitiously breaking loose from an assembly of grown-ups.

  8. 8

    To seek sexual variety, to sow one's wild oats.

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₁éǵʰ Proto-Indo-European *-s Proto-Indo-European *h₁éǵʰs Proto-Italic *eks Latin ex Latin ex- Latin plōrō Latin explōrōder. Middle French explorerder. English explore From Middle French explorer, from Latin explōrāre (“to investigate, search out”), itself said to be originally a hunters' term meaning "to set up a loud cry", from ex- (“out”) + plōrāre (“to cry”), but the second element is also explained as "to make to flow" (from pluere (“to flow”)). Displaced native Old English rāsian.

noun

  1. 1

    An exploration; a tour of a place to see what it is like.

    Daylight was fading quickly, but I was still keen to have a little explore of the town and beach.

Forms

plural
explores
past tense
explored
past participle
explored
present participle
exploring
third person singular
explores
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).