explode
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /ɪkˈspləʊd/
ipa: /ɪkˈsploʊd/
rhymes: -əʊd
Forms: form: explodes
form: exploding
form: exploded
form: exploded
form: no-table-tags
form: glossary
form: explode
form: explode
form: exploded
form: explode
form: explodest
form: exploded
form: explodedst
form: explodes
form: explodeth
form: exploded
form: explode
form: exploded
form: explode
form: exploded
form: explode
form: -
form: exploding
form: exploded
form: asplode
form: esplode
Etymology: First recorded around 1538, from the Latin verb explōdere (“drive out or off by clapping”). The meaning was originally theatrical, "to drive an actor off the stage by making noise," hence meaning to "to drive out" or "to reject". From ex- (“out”) + plaudere (“to clap; to applaud”). In English it used to mean to "drive out with violence and sudden noise" (from around 1660), and later meaning to "go off with a loud noise" (from around 1790). The sense of "bursting with destructive force" is first recorded around 1882.
Senses: examples: text: The assassin exploded the car by means of a car bomb.
synonyms: blow up
blow
blast
burst
glosses: To destroy with an explosion.
examples: text: They sought to explode the myth.
glosses: To destroy violently or abruptly.
examples: text: Explode the assembly drawing so that all the fasteners are visible.
glosses: To create an exploded view of.
examples: text: Astrology is required by many famous physicians […] doubted of, and exploded by others.
ref: , II, 344
text: [W]henever the person who is possessed of [natural goodness] doth what is right, no ravished or friendly spectator is so eager or so loud in his applause: on the contrary, when he doth wrong, no critic is so apt to hiss and explode him.
ref: 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling:
text: Another instance of the like nature is, that the old opinion, that Turks and infidels are perpetually to be considered as alien enemies, has been long exploded.
ref: 1783, Richard Wooddeson, Lectures on the Law of England, page 229:
glosses: To disprove or debunk.
examples: text: The bomb explodes.
text: But signalman Bridges was never to answer driver Gimbert's desperate question. A deafening, massive blast blew the wagon to shreds, the 44 high-explosive bombs exploding like simultaneous hits from the aircraft they should have been dropped from. The station was instantly reduced to bits of debris, and the line to a huge crater.
ref: 2022 January 12, Benedict le Vay, “The heroes of Soham...”, in RAIL, number 948, page 43:
glosses: To fly apart with sudden violent force; to blow up, to burst, to detonate, to go off.
examples: text: She exploded when I criticised her hat.
text: Dobbin […] fell back in the crowd, crowing and sputtering until he reached a safe distance, when he exploded amongst the astonished market-people with shrieks of yelling laughter.
ref: 1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC:
text: “Nonsense!” Jack exploded at me. “Why Miss Bertram here knocked that theory into a cocked hat coming over on the train.”
ref: 1902, Albert R. Carman, “My Bridal Trip” (short story), in The Canadian Magazine, Volume 20, Number 1 (November 1902), page 15
synonyms: blow up
glosses: To make a violent or emotional outburst; to suddenly give expression to powerful and often negative or unpleasant emotion, especially anger.
examples: text: When pigeons can come to a spot day in and day out for a guaranteed meal, their populations explode.
ref: 2016, Nathanael Johnson, Unseen City, →ISBN, page 19:
text: Despite these products typically costing more, the market for organic food has exploded over the last couple of decades.
ref: 2025 April 1, Greg Rosalsky, “Crumbling trust in American institutions: A MAHA activist takes on Girl Scout cookies”, in NPR:
synonyms: blow up
glosses: To increase suddenly.
examples: text: The function f(x) = 1/x explodes around x = 0.
topics: mathematics
sciences
glosses: To increase arbitrarily or boundlessly.
examples: text: to explode into the mainstream; to explode onto the scene
text: In recent years, words and ideas used to describe discrimination against members of historically marginalized and disadvantaged groups have seemingly exploded into the lexicon: systemic inequality, privilege, white supremacy, the patriarchy, etc.
ref: 2022 February 26, David Rozado, Musa al-Gharbi, Jamin Halberstadt, “Use of ‘sexist’ and ‘racist’ in the New York Times increased over 400% since 2012. Why?”, in The Guardian:
text: A.I. text-to-image generators such as Stable Diffusion, Midjourney and DALL-E exploded onto the scene this year and in mere months have become widely used to create all sorts of images, ranging from digital art pieces to character designs.
ref: 2022 December 31, Sarah Andersen, “The Alt-Right Manipulated My Comic. Then A.I. Claimed It.”, in The New York Times:
synonyms: burst
glosses: To emerge suddenly.
glosses: To ejaculate.
examples: text: The third check uses the exploded data stored in the array $parts and the function checkdate() to test if the date is a valid calendar date.
ref: 2004, Hugh E. Williams, David Lane, Web Database Applications with PHP and MySQL:
topics: computing
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
programming
sciences
synonyms: split
unstring
glosses: To break (a delimited string of text) into several smaller strings by removing the separators.
examples: text: I'm looking for some code that will implode data using the PKZIP method.. and explode it. PKWare sells an object that you can link with that does the job, and we have licensed this, but we are now writing 32 bit code for MS-DOS and the PKWare stuff won't work […]
ref: 1992, Steve Tibbett, “PKZIP Implode compression/decompression.”, in comp.compression (Usenet):
topics: computing
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
sciences
synonyms: unstring
glosses: To decompress (data) that was previously imploded.
glosses: To open all doors and hatches on an automobile.
qualifier: board gaming
glosses: Of a die, to produce the highest face result and consequently reroll.
Synonyms: word: asplode
word: blast
word: blow
word: blow up
word: burst
word: detonate
word: displode
word: dynamite
word: explode
word: fulminate
word: go off
word: let off
word: nuke
word: rive
word: set off
Derived terms: word: explodability
word: explodable
word: exploded
word: exploder
word: explodey
word: exploding
word: exploding cucumber
word: exploding head syndrome
word: explodium
word: kerplode
word: kersplode
word: unexplode
Related terms: explosion
explosive
implode
implosive
applaud