Other forms: explored, exploring, explores
To explore is to travel through a new place to find out what is there. Explore the coast, explore the caves, went out to explore.
The abstract sense is at least as common and means to examine a question thoroughly: explore the options, explore the possibility, worth exploring. In medicine, exploratory surgery is done to find out what is wrong. Note explorer, explorationist's shorter cousin exploration, and that exploring and discovering are different acts — explorers find places that were already known to whoever lived there.
1verbexploreTo travel through a place to find out what is there.
“We spent the day exploring the old town and its narrow streets.”
2verbexamineTo examine a question thoroughly.
“The report explores four options and recommends none.”
explore is a searching out.
Latin explorare may come from a hunting term meaning to cry out — the shout raised on finding game. If so, exploring began as the noise made at the end of a search rather than the search itself.
Middle French
explorer
English, today
explore
Built from
From Middle French explorer. From Middle French explorer, from Latin explōrō (“to investigate, search out”), itself said to be originally a hunters' term meaning "to set up a loud cry", from ex- (“out”) + plōrō (“to cry”), but the second element is also explained as "to make to flow" (from pluō (“to flow”)). Displaced native Old English rāsian.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA