EXPLODE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Explode

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/ɪksplˈoʊd/ Listen

verb

Explode v. t.

1.

To drive from the stage by noisy expressions of disapprobation; to hoot off; to drive away or reject noisily; as, to explode a play. (Obs.) "Him old and young Exploded, and seized with violent hands."

2.

To bring into disrepute, and reject; to drive from notice and acceptance; as, to explode a scheme, fashion, or doctrine. "Old exploded contrivances of mercantile fraud." "To explode and exterminate dark atheism."

3.

To cause to explode or burst noisily; to detonate; as, to explode powder by touching it with fire.

4.

To drive out with violence and noise, as by powder. "But late the kindled powder did explode The massy ball and the brass tube unload."

Explode v. i. (past & past part. exploded; pres. part. exploding)

1.

To become suddenly expanded into a great volume of gas or vapor; to burst violently into flame; as, gunpowder explodes.

2.

To burst with force and a loud report; to detonate, as a shell filled with powder or the like material, or as a boiler from too great pressure of steam.

3.

To burst forth with sudden violence and noise; as, at this, his wrath exploded.

See images of 'Explode'

Etymology of 'Explode'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar

"Explode" Quotes from Famous Books

... Andromaque. Hermione is a splendid tigress consumed by her desire for Pyrrhus; and Oreste is a melancholy, almost morbid man, whose passion for Hermione is the dominating principle of his life. These are the ingredients of the tragedy, ready to explode like gunpowder with the slightest spark. The spark is lighted when Pyrrhus declares to Andromaque that if she will not marry him he will execute her son. Andromaque consents, but decides secretly to kill herself immediately after the marriage, ...

— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey

... tragic poets, the choral songs have frequently little or no connexion with the fable, and are nothing better than a mere episodical ornament, they therefore conclude that the Greeks had only to take one more step in the progress of dramatic art, to explode the Chorus altogether. To refute these superficial conjectures, it is only necessary to observe that Sophocles wrote a Treatise on the Chorus, in prose, in opposition to the principles of some other poets; and that, far from ...

— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... can say 'damn' as often as I choose. I don't say it very often, but sometimes I feel I must say it or explode." ...

— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... Diestricht who honoured you by accepting the commission; not you who honoured Max Diestricht by intrusting him with it. "Of what use is it to me, a safe!" he would exclaim. "It hides nothing; it only says, 'I am inside; do not look farther; come and get me!' Yes? It is to explode with the nitro-glycerin—POUF!—and I am deaf and I hear nothing. It is a foolishness, that"—he had a habit of prodding at one with a levelled fore-finger—"every night somewhere they are robbed, and have I been robbed? HEIN, tell me that; ...

— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... a graver suspicion crossed his mind: might not some detonating substance of a nature to explode when trodden upon, have been flung in? Hillsborough excelled in deviltries ...

— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com