Jump To:

• 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.

---

Explorer ¹ British  

/ ɪkˈsplɔːrə /

noun

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

---

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

---

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

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

This docuseries was created by National Geographic explorer Bertie Gregory, a cinematographer for legendary nature filmmaker David Attenborough, who knows how to dazzle with close-up imagery.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 13, 2026

Her background is particularly eclectic: an engineer by training, she is a seasoned explorer who has worked in extreme environments including Antarctica.

From Barron's ● Mar. 25, 2026

No father could be more exciting than an explorer.

From "The Subtle Knife" by Philip Pullman

The agency approached Hughes, the aerospace businessman, to build a massive deep-sea drill-ship called the Hughes Glomar Explorer, and paid him more than $350 million—billions in today’s money.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 16, 2026

A federal government employee living outside of Los Angeles, Arevalo recently set out to replace his fuel-thirsty Ford Explorer SUV.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 28, 2026

Here, the Juan de Fuca and Explorer plates are slowly sliding beneath the North American plate.

From Science Daily ● Apr. 29, 2026

The “Ride-Alongs” mostly involve a single officer, accompanied in their patrol vehicle by a single Explorer for the entirety or most of the officer’s shift.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 18, 2026

In fact, he’s consulted on numerous television shows, including Sesame Street, Dora the Explorer; and Blue's Clues.

From "A Deadly Wandering: A Mystery, a Landmark Investigation, and the Astonishing Science of Attention in the Digital Age" by Matt Richtel

McGrath is part of a growing community of online urban explorers and has been back to the tunnels to photograph them and remember his grandad.

From BBC ● Jul. 11, 2026

The long-vacant site has become a magnet for so-called urban explorers, who prowl abandoned malls, hospitals, power plants, amusement parks, factories and any other disused structure they can breach.

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

Africa is the continent where protohumans evolved for the longest time, where anatomically modern humans may also have arisen, and where native diseases like malaria and yellow fever killed European explorers.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond