explore

Picture a Roman hunter moving through thick woodland, shouting to flush game into the open. That vivid scene may lie behind Latin explorāre: ex- meant “out,” while plōrāre meant “to cry out,” although some scholars connect the second element instead with flowing. By the 1580s, English had borrowed the French explorer for the quieter business of investigating, and by the 1610s it could describe traveling into unknown countries in search of discoveries. The same crying root survives in deplore—literally, in an old-fashioned sense, to cry bitterly over something—and in implore, to cry out earnestly for help. So when you explore, you may imagine a modern researcher with a notebook, but the word’s oldest picture is noisier: someone shouting into the wilderness to make the unknown reveal itself.