Exploration

How to spell exploration

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce exploration

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does exploration mean?

1. nounThe act of travelling through or investigating an area, subject, or possibility in order to learn about it.

Exploration in a sentence

• The company funded the exploration of the remote coastline.

• Her thesis is an exploration of medieval trade routes.

Where does exploration come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin verb explorare, which meant 'to search out' or 'to investigate'. The root is built from ex- meaning 'out' and plorare meaning 'to cry out' or 'to wail', and one persuasive explanation is that the term began as a hunting word, describing the shouts a huntsman gave on flushing out game, which then broadened into the general idea of searching a region thoroughly. The Romans turned the verb into the noun exploratio for the act of reconnoitring or scouting, especially in a military sense. English took the word in through French, where it appeared as exploration, and by the 1500s it was used in English for the act of examining or investigating something carefully. The modern sense of travelling to discover unknown lands grew prominent in the age of sea voyages, and the steady -ation ending, shared with so many action nouns, is the part most worth fixing in memory.

How the word is built

• ex- (out)
• plor (from Latin plorare: to cry out)
• -ation (noun of action)