Explode

How to spell explode

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce explode

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does explode mean?

1. verbTo burst apart violently and noisily, or to increase suddenly and dramatically.

Explode in a sentence

• Engineers worried the old boiler might explode under pressure.

• Property prices in the city began to explode after the new rail link opened.

Where does explode come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Explode comes from the Latin explodere, which originally meant 'to drive off the stage by clapping or hissing'. It was built from ex-, meaning 'out', and plaudere, meaning 'to clap the hands' or 'to applaud', so a bad performer was literally clapped and jeered out of the theatre. When the word arrived in English in the 1500s it kept this scornful sense of rejecting something with noise, as in to explode a theory. Over the 1600s and 1700s the idea of a sudden, noisy burst shifted from human hissing to the violent expansion of gunpowder, and the modern meaning of bursting apart with force took hold. The same plaudere root survives in 'applaud' and 'plaudits', a reminder that explode began as a sound made by an audience rather than a bomb.

How the word is built

• ex- (out)
• plod- (from plaudere: to clap, applaud)
• -e