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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

Paddy describes himself as an "artist, inventor, explorer and plumber based in Belfast".

From BBC ● Aug. 18, 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

Columbus, Ohio’s fastest-growing big city, was named in the 1800s by a local politician who admired the explorer.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 4, 2026

As soon as possible, which was three days later, Malcolm hurried to the priory to learn more about the child of the famous explorer.

From "The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage" 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

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

Somewhere, hours from here, a cracked Junior Explorer compass lay on the floor of the woods.

From "Breadcrumbs" by Anne Ursu

"Humans are natural explorers, and with them come their voices, their memories … and their microbes," said Prabal Saxena, a planetary scientist who led the study from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 25, 2026

Not a very imaginative lot, those Spanish explorers.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 1, 2026

Last month, explorers discovered the ruins of the Douglas DC-4 aircraft using an autonomous sonar drone that detected the aircraft's fuselage and tail.

From BBC ● Jul. 22, 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

“I guess you’ve got sort of used to playing around with those explorers at the Pole.”

From "Mr. Popper's Penguins" by Florence Atwater and Richard Atwater