explode

Etymology

First recorded around 1538, from the Latin verb explōdere (“drive out or off by clapping”). The meaning was originally theatrical, "to drive an actor off the stage by making noise," hence meaning to "to drive out" or "to reject". From ex- (“out”) + plaudere (“to clap; to applaud”). In English it used to mean to "drive out with violence and sudden noise" (from around 1660), and later meaning to "go off with a loud noise" (from around 1790). The sense of "bursting with destructive force" is first recorded around 1882.

verb

1. (transitive) To destroy with an explosion.
   The assassin exploded the car by means of a car bomb.
2. (transitive) To destroy violently or abruptly.
   They sought to explode the myth.
3. (transitive) To create an exploded view of.
   Explode the assembly drawing so that all the fasteners are visible.
4. (transitive, archaic) To disprove or debunk.
   Astrology is required by many famous physicians […] doubted of, and exploded by others. , II, 344
   [W]henever the person who is possessed of [natural goodness] doth what is right, no ravished or friendly spectator is so eager or so loud in his applause: on the contrary, when he doth wrong, no critic is so apt to hiss and explode him. 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
   Another instance of the like nature is, that the old opinion, that Turks and infidels are perpetually to be considered as alien enemies, has been long exploded. 1783, Richard Wooddeson, Lectures on the Law of England, page 229
5. (intransitive) To fly apart with sudden violent force; to blow up, to burst, to detonate, to go off.
   The bomb explodes.
   But signalman Bridges was never to answer driver Gimbert's desperate question. A deafening, massive blast blew the wagon to shreds, the 44 high-explosive bombs exploding like simultaneous hits from the aircraft they should have been dropped from. The station was instantly reduced to bits of debris, and the line to a huge crater. January 12 2022, Benedict le Vay, “The heroes of Soham...”, in RAIL, number 948, page 43
6. (intransitive, figurative) To make a violent or emotional outburst.
   She exploded when I criticised her hat.
   “Nonsense!” Jack exploded at me. “Why Miss Bertram here knocked that theory into a cocked hat coming over on the train.” 1902, Albert R. Carman, “My Bridal Trip” (short story), in The Canadian Magazine, Volume 20, Number 1 (November 1902), page 15
7. (intransitive, figurative) To increase suddenly.
   When pigeons can come to a spot day in and day out for a guaranteed meal, their populations explode. 2016, Nathanael Johnson, Unseen City, page 19
8. (intransitive, figurative) To emerge suddenly.
   to explode into the mainstream; to explode onto the scene
   In recent years, words and ideas used to describe discrimination against members of historically marginalized and disadvantaged groups have seemingly exploded into the lexicon: systemic inequality, privilege, white supremacy, the patriarchy, etc. 2022-02-26, David Rozado, Musa al-Gharbi, Jamin Halberstadt, “Use of ‘sexist’ and ‘racist’ in the New York Times increased over 400% since 2012. Why?”, in The Guardian
   A.I. text-to-image generators such as Stable Diffusion, Midjourney and DALL-E exploded onto the scene this year and in mere months have become widely used to create all sorts of images, ranging from digital art pieces to character designs. 2022-12-31, Sarah Andersen, “The Alt-Right Manipulated My Comic. Then A.I. Claimed It.”, in The New York Times
9. (slang, vulgar) To ejaculate.
10. (computing, programming, PHP) To break (a delimited string of text) into several smaller strings by removing the separators.
    The third check uses the exploded data stored in the array $parts and the function checkdate() to test if the date is a valid calendar date. 2004, Hugh E. Williams, David Lane, Web Database Applications with PHP and MySQL
11. (transitive, computing) To decompress (data) that was previously imploded.
    I'm looking for some code that will implode data using the PKZIP method.. and explode it. PKWare sells an object that you can link with that does the job, and we have licensed this, but we are now writing 32 bit code for MS-DOS and the PKWare stuff won't work […] 1992, Steve Tibbett, “PKZIP Implode compression/decompression.”, in comp.compression (Usenet)
12. (transitive) To open all doors and hatches on an automobile.
13. (intransitive, board gaming) Of a die, to produce the highest face result and consequently reroll.