Exploder

Exploder n.

Used within Microsoft to refer to the Windows Explorer, the interface component of Windows 95 and WinNT 4. Our spies report that most of the heavy guns at MS came from a Unix background and use command line utilities; even they are scornful of the over-gingerbreaded WIMP environments that they have been called upon to create.

--The Jargon File version 4.3.1, ed. ESR, autonoded by rescdsk.

The trademark manuver of puroresu superstar Jun Akiyama. The move is applied by standing belly to belly with one's opponent and placing your right arm around your opponents neck and your left arm around the back of his leg. You then lift your opponent off of the mat and bring him over your head sending him crashing to the ground. Variations of the move include the Dangerous Exploder, where you deliver your opponent to the ground at a more or less vertical position causing him to land directly on the top of his head and the Exploder '98 where you grasp your opponents left hand from behind the back of his right leg. An interesting footnote to the Exploder is that the reaction of the television announcer to the move is very similar to that of the famous spanish soccer announcer that is often lampooned. The move is announced in English in the middle of Japanese commentary and is roughly pronounced: EX-POHD-DAH! (The Japanese language has no true "L" sound so either "R" is substituted or the sound is dropped off)

Do you remember those clunky boxes with a large plunger used by cartoon coyotes and mustachioed villains in old cartoons to set off dynamite? Those are absolutely a real thing, and are called exploders.

Sometimes known by the arguably more technical names 'shot exploder' or 'blasting machine', these boxes housed a generator which generated an electric current when the plunger was depressed. This current traveled down a wire to the blasting cap, which set off the main charge.

Exploders were originally fairly large -- the cartoons have the scale just about right -- and took some effort to depress the plunger, as the rod is covered in teeth, in order to spin a gear as it descends, which in turn spun the dynamo. Just to be extra safe, the rod was also the 'pin' that completed the circuit once fully depressed, so that an unexpected electrical discharge wouldn't kill the workers when they were setting the system up.

Modern systems use a battery and work with the push of a button, often by remote control. They are unassuming and small, but may take a degree in electrical engineering to use properly. No self-respecting cartoon villain would be caught dead using one.

Iron Noder

Ex*plod"er (?), n.

1.

One who or that which explodes.

2.

One who rejects an opinion or scheme with open contempt.

South.

© Webster 1913.