Exploratory

How to spell exploratory

11 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce exploratory

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does exploratory mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to or carried out in order to investigate or discover something, rather than to reach a final result.

Exploratory in a sentence

• The surgeon ordered an exploratory procedure to find the source of the pain.

• The company funded an exploratory study before committing to the new market.

Where does exploratory come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb explorare, which meant 'to investigate' or 'to search out', and from it came the adjective exploratorius, describing something that serves to search or reconnoitre. The verb itself is usually broken down as ex-, meaning 'out', joined to plorare, 'to cry out'; one long-standing explanation is that it began as a hunting term, since hunters would shout to flush game from cover, so 'to search out' carried the idea of raising a cry while scouting. The military Latin explorator was a scout sent ahead to gather information, and that sense of cautious advance investigation still echoes in the modern meaning. English took the word in during the 1600s, building on the already-borrowed verb 'explore', and applied it to anything done to discover or examine rather than to conclude. Remembering that the ending is the adjective suffix -atory, the same shape seen in 'preparatory' and 'observatory', helps fix the unstressed vowels that make the tail of the word easy to fumble.

How the word is built

• ex- (out)
• plor- (from Latin explorare: to search out)
• -atory (adjective suffix meaning 'relating to')