explored

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of explore.

   The team explored the river's source last summer.

   Few of these tunnels had been explored before the expedition arrived.

   Note

   One spelling does two jobs here. The past tense stands alone (they explored the coast), while the participle follows have or be (had been explored). Only the transitive uses can turn passive. The intransitive ones take no object: examining diagnostically, or a party simply exploring for days. In older texts it can mean sought after someone, a use now obsolete. Placed before a noun, it becomes the adjective.

2. 2
   adjective

   Having been examined or traveled through to learn what it contains.

   The thoroughly explored region offered few surprises to the survey team.

   Only the explored sections of the cave system appear on the official map.

   Similarcharted, mapped

   Oppositeunexplored, uncharted, unmapped

   Note

   Here the participle has settled into a gradable adjective. A region can be more explored than its neighbor, or the most explored part of a cave system, and it sits comfortably after degree adverbs such as thoroughly or little. It names a resulting state rather than an act, the condition left behind once the verb's action is done.

   The northern valleys are far more explored than the southern ridges.

   This is the most explored stretch of the river.

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