exploded

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of explode.

   The factory exploded soon after the chemical leak began.

   Several mines had exploded along the road before the convoy arrived.

   Note

   A regular -ed form doing double duty. The same spelling gives the simple past (the boiler exploded) and the participle after have (the boiler has exploded). Explode can take an object or not, but only the object-taking senses form passives: the bridge was exploded by engineers. In older prose, a theory could be exploded, meaning disproved. The participle also settles into adjectives, as in the diagram sense.

2. 2
   adjective

   Having been blown apart or destroyed by an explosion.

   Investigators sifted through the exploded car for clues to the bombing.

   The exploded pipeline spewed flames across the desert for hours.

   Similarshattered, wrecked, ruptured

   Oppositeintact

3. 3
   adjectivefiguratively

   Shown or drawn with the component parts spaced apart to reveal how they assemble.

   Like a watch taken apart on a jeweler's cloth, each piece set in the order it came out.

   The repair guide opened with an exploded view of the gearbox.

   An exploded sketch on the whiteboard helped the team see each layer of the casing.

   Note

   Nothing has blown up here. The word borrows the image of a blast for a drawing whose parts float apart in order, so each piece's place in the whole stays visible. It belongs to technical illustration and charts and almost always comes before a noun: an exploded diagram, an exploded view, an exploded pie chart with its slices pulled out from the center. Read literally, it would be the blown-up sense.

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