Exploded

How to spell exploded

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce exploded

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does exploded mean?

1. verbBurst apart suddenly and violently with a loud noise, or increased very rapidly.

Exploded in a sentence

• The gas canister exploded in the heat of the fire.

• The city's population exploded over the last decade.

Where does exploded come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the past tense of 'explode', which comes from the Latin explodere, a compound of ex- meaning 'out' and plaudere meaning 'to clap the hands' or 'to applaud'. In Roman theatres explodere literally meant to drive a performer off the stage by clapping, hissing, and jeering, so its earliest sense was one of noisy rejection rather than bursting. When the word arrived in English in the 1500s it kept that scornful meaning of 'to reject loudly', which survives faintly in the phrase 'to explode a theory'. Only in the 1700s did the modern sense of a violent bursting with a loud noise take hold, the idea of the noise outlasting the idea of the audience. The same plaudere root also gives us 'applaud' and 'plausible', which is a useful reminder that the central -plod- is spelled with a single d before the -ed ending.

How the word is built

• ex- (out)
• plod (from Latin plaudere: to clap or applaud)
• -ed (past tense suffix)