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• explorer
  explorer

  noun

  a person or thing that explores.
• Explorer
  Explorer

  noun

  a member of the senior branch of the Scouts

explorer

American  

[ik-splawr-er] / ɪkˈsplɔr ər /

noun

• explorers
  plural

1. a person or thing that explores.

2. a person who investigates unknown regions.

   the great explorers of the Renaissance.

3. any instrument used in exploring or sounding a wound, a cavity in a tooth, or the like.

4. Also called Explorer Scout.  (initial capital letter) a person between the ages 14 and 20 who is an active participant in the exploring program sponsored by the Boy Scouts of America.

5. (initial capital letter) one of a long series of U.S. scientific satellites: Explorer 1 (1958) was the first U.S. artificial satellite.

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Explorer ¹ British  

/ ɪkˈsplɔːrə /

noun

1. Brit equivalent: Venture Scout.  a member of the senior branch of the Scouts

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Explorer ² British  

/ ɪkˈsplɔːrə /

noun

1. any of the first series of US satellites. Explorer 1 , launched in 1958, confirmed the existence of intense radiation belts around the earth

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• explorers
  plural

Etymology

Origin of explorer

First recorded in 1675–85; explore + -er ¹

Explanation

An explorer is a person who sets out to discover something by going somewhere unfamiliar. You might think Marco Polo is just a game to play in the pool, but Marco Polo was actually a famous explorer in the 13th century. In ancient Greece, the explorer Pytheas travelled to what is now Great Britain and Germany, and the Chinese explorer Wang Dayuan explored the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea in the second century BCE. More recently, explorers have voyaged to the moon and outer space. Before the late seventeenth century, this kind of adventurer was called an exploratour, from the Latin root explorare, "examine or investigate."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

explorer Explorer explorers

Matthews, a maritime explorer and historian, first became interested in the crash in 2019, after reading about a luggage tag from the flight that had washed ashore in Florida.

From BBC ● Jul. 22, 2026

It would take 118 years for a spacecraft to travel far enough away to find it, based on estimates from the speed of Nasa’s New Horizons explorer.

From Science Daily ● Jun. 9, 2026

“In the 14th century A.D., a Moroccan explorer named Ibn Battuta documented that a buttery variation of khichuri was eaten daily in South Asia,” wrote Rachael Grow for Mashed.

From Salon ● Jun. 7, 2026

Critics on the Croisette are starting to resemble that classic comic-strip panel in which an explorer crawls desperately across the sand toward an oasis that’s only a mirage.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 19, 2026

“Did you ever hear of an explorer called Stanislaus Grumman?”

From "The Golden Compass" by Philip Pullman

That’s the main reason Norwegian boat-tour company Brim Explorer is retrofitting its whale-watching fleet to run exclusively on battery power by 2030.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 16, 2026

No other employee was paid more than $5,000 from 2016 to 2024, according to FLAG’s federal filings, obtained through ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer.

From Salon ● Aug. 1, 2026

The European Space Agency's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer mission, known as JUICE, launched in April 2023 and is scheduled to arrive at Jupiter in July 2031.

From Science Daily ● Jul. 29, 2026

The recall covers certain Expedition, Navigator, Explorer, Aviator, F-150 models from 2018 to 2021.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 30, 2026

Out in the driveway, she saw that Trip’s Jeep was gone, as was Lexie’s Explorer, and Moody’s bike, and, of course, her husband’s sedan.

From "Little Fires Everywhere" by Celeste Ng

Some explorers who have posted about the IBM site say they follow an observe-and-preserve ethos and reject vandalism.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 7, 2026

It’s a tradition that dates back to 1886, and there have been over 200 such parades since then, celebrating great explorers, war heroes and champion athletes.

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 17, 2026

For more than 250 years, stories from early explorers described crocodiles as a common sight along the shores of the Seychelles.

From Science Daily ● May 28, 2026

Sardines, tuna and abalone have all at some point been abundant along the California Current, a 1,900-mile stretch of the Pacific that has been ripe for explorers and fishers for centuries.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 12, 2026

Marine explorers know that “scuba” is an acronym for Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus.

From "The Unseen Guest" by Maryrose Wood