explode

英文词源

explode

explode: [16] The use of explode to mean ‘burst with destructive force’ is a comparatively recent, late 19th-century development. The Latin verb explōdere, from which it comes, signified something quite different – ‘drive off the stage with hisses and boos’ (it was a compound formed from the prefix ex- ‘out’ and plaudere ‘clap’, source of English applaud and plaudits).

From this developed the figurative sense ‘reject, disapprove’, which was how the word was used when it was first taken over into English: ‘Not that I wholly explode Astrology; I believe there is something in it’, Thomas Tryon, Miscellanea 1696 (the modern notion of ‘exploding a theory’ is descended from this usage). In the 17th century, however, the Latin verb’s original sense was reintroduced, and it survived into the 19th century: ‘In the playhouse when he doth wrong, no critic is so apt to hiss and explode him’, Henry Fielding, Tom Jones 1749.

Towards the end of the 17th century we find the first traces of a metaphorical use that combines the notion of ‘driving out, expelling’ with ‘loud noise’ (‘the effects of Lightning, exploded from the Clouds’, Robert Plot, Natural History of Staffordshire 1679), but it was not to be for more than a century that the meaning element ‘drive out’ was replaced by the ‘burst, shatter’ of present-day English explode (Dr Johnson makes no mention of it in his Dictionary 1755, for example) Today the notion of ‘bursting violently’ is primary, that of ‘loud noise’ probably secondary, although still present.
=> applause, plaudits

explode (v.)

1530s (transitive), "to reject with scorn," from Latin explodere "drive out or off by clapping, hiss off, hoot off," originally theatrical, "to drive an actor off the stage by making noise," hence "drive out, reject, destroy the repute of" (a sense surviving in an exploded theory), from ex- "out" (see ex-) + plaudere "to clap the hands, applaud," which is of uncertain origin. Athenian audiences were highly demonstrative. clapping and shouting approval, stamping, hissing, and hooting for disapproval. The Romans seem to have done likewise.

At the close of the performance of a comedy in the Roman theatre one of the actors dismissed the audience, with a request for their approbation, the expression being usually plaudite, vos plaudite, or vos valete et plaudite. [William Smith, "A First Latin Reading Book," 1890]

English used it to mean "drive out with violence and sudden noise" (1650s), later "cause to burst suddenly and noisily" (1794). Intransitive sense of "go off with a loud noise" is from 1790, American English; figurative sense of "to burst with destructive force" is by 1882; that of "burst into sudden activity" is from 1817; of population by 1959. Related: Exploded; exploding.