Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun obsolete A cave, cavern or grotto.
  • verb To explore caves.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb explore natural caves

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin spelunca, from Ancient Greek σπῆλυγξ (spēlunks, "cave, cavern, grotto"). Cognates include German Spelunke.

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Examples

  • I'd have to come home to find Karen playing spelunk the money with the cast of Glee to consider venting my dismay on the internet.

    JD Roberto: It's (Not) Complicated JD Roberto 2011

  • The primary job of the literary critic is to pry open the craniums of characters, authors and narrators, climb inside their heads and spelunk through the bewildering complexity within to figure out what makes them tick.

    Experimental Fiction 2010

  • We couldn't crack open craniums and "spelunk through the bewildering complexity" even if we wanted to (and the novel gives us no reason to want to) since the "bewildering complexity" is all external, in the mode of storytelling itself.

    Experimental Fiction 2010

  • From Jordan Scott: “Having stuttered all of my life, blert represents a spelunk into the mouth of the stutterer, a trek across labial regions, a repel through the stalagmites of molars and canines, a lexical navigation into the cavernous poetics of what it means to stutter.”

    Jordan Scott: Audio Interview 2009

  • The book starts out creamy, but really picks up around chapter three when Jig and Smudge encounter an angry were-wombat who wants to spelunk them both.

    Mad Libs Reviewing jimhines 2010

  • It's not necessary to spelunk too deeply into the taint sewer in order to collect some of the most ridiculous examples of the press -- the apparently "liberal" and "in the tank for Obama" press, by the way -- attempting to connect Barack Obama with the alleged Blagojevich crimes.

    Bob Cesca: Why the Media Taint-Mongers are Continuing to Wrongfully Accuse Obama 2009

  • Every inch is taken up with merchandise, and browsing the corridors and grottos can feel like a spelunk into a colorful cave or an archaeological dig through the lost library of Alexandria.

    The best book store in the known universe « The Retort 2009

  • Also, even if you don't have a very long life expectancy right now, if you let me write your obituary I am changing your birthdate so it looks like you were at least 200- 'cause otherwise the amount of stuff you have done will shame me far too much as a lesser being who actually would rather NOT, say, spelunk in active volcanoes... you're going to respond and say you've done that, aren't you?

    Things I think about in bed, and why I need to get out MORE Elizabeth McClung 2008

  • There's nothing homosexual about that, regardless of where there naked manhood should accidentally spelunk.

    Factchecking FUBAR 2006

  • It's published on the Mozilla site, but it took me a while to spelunk to it, so for the benefit of popup-haters everywhere, here is the procedure:

    September 26th, 2005 curufea 2005

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