Exploring

How to spell exploring

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce exploring

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does exploring mean?

1. verbTravelling through or searching an unfamiliar place, or examining an idea or option in detail.

Exploring in a sentence

• The family spent the morning exploring the old harbour town on foot.

• The committee is exploring several options before deciding on a budget.

Where does exploring come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin verb explorare, which meant 'to search out' or 'to investigate'. The most striking theory traces it to ex- meaning 'out' plus plorare meaning 'to cry out', because hunters once located prey by shouting and listening to the response, so 'crying out' came to mean 'searching the ground'. English borrowed it through French in the 1500s, at first in the sense of investigating or examining a place, and the meaning of travelling into unknown territory grew alongside the great age of sea voyages. The familiar relative 'explorer' shares this same root, as does the slightly old-fashioned 'deplore', which kept the original 'weeping' sense more literally. The present participle 'exploring' simply adds the -ing ending, so the trap is remembering the single 'r' before the suffix rather than doubling it.

How the word is built

• ex- (out)
• plor (from Latin plorare, to cry out)
• -ing (present participle suffix)