exploding

Sayik-SPLOHD-ingUS/ɪkˈsploʊdɪŋ/UK/ɪkˈspləʊdɪŋ/

4 meanings of exploding

Practice

1
verb
Present participle and gerund of explode.
Shells were exploding along the front line throughout the night.
Exploding with sudden force, the boiler sent steam across the room.
Note
The -ing form carries every use of explode, with or without an object. Shells exploding along a line burst on their own; a charge or a myth is exploded by someone. A diagram can explode a machine into its parts, and a person exploding is bursting with feeling. A head exploding from rubbish belongs to that last kind. The sense of debunking, as in exploding a theory, is now archaic.
2
adjectivefiguratively
Resembling an explosion; having the look of a sudden, violent burst spreading outward.
The graphic featured an exploding burst of lines radiating from the center.
Critics praised the exploding spray of color in the artist's latest mural.
Similarexplosive, bursting
3
adjectivefiguratively
Available only for a very short period before expiring, leaving little time to decide.
The recruiter presented an exploding offer that expired within forty-eight hours.
Startups sometimes face exploding term sheets that pressure founders to commit quickly.
Note
A negotiating term for an offer that self-destructs at a deadline. It attaches to the offer itself, as in an exploding offer or an exploding term sheet, and it is not graded: no offer is more exploding than another. The short window is the point. It pushes the other side to decide before they can compare alternatives, so the word usually carries a note of pressure.

Less common meaning

4
noundatedcountable
An explosion; a sudden, violent bursting apart with noise and force.
Villagers ran outside at the sound of the exploding down by the river.
Blowings up —explodings— Such would be your fate; Streams of fire 'neath us! — Bless us, what a state!
1876, William Cox Bennett, Songs of a Song Writer
Similarexplosion, blast, detonation, bang
Note
A countable noun with its own plural, explodings, unlike the gerund in the verb form. William Cox Bennett uses it in verse in Songs of a Song Writer (1876), and today it sounds dated. Where it returns, as in Progress in Self Psychology (2013), it sits in lists of processes like surgings, fadings and explodings, stressing the act over the event. For an everyday blast, explosion is the safe choice.

exploding is a form of explode

explode, verb: To fly apart with sudden, violent force, as when something blows up or detonates. Full entry

Forms: explodeexplodes he/she/itexploding -ing formexploded past tense, past participle
Spelling: explode → exploding: drop the e, add -ing

Practice

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