What are spelunkers?

Answer 1

it is a person who explores caves.

+++

Not according to most such people.

I've no idea where the word originated [but now see below] - USA slang yes, but how, when & why I do not know. No American caving literature I've ever read, uses the word. The proper, international, term in the English language is "caver". Simple as that.

!!!

Since writing that below my '+++' answer-partition I learnt that "spelunker" was a rather pretentious but harmless invention by two American cavers in the 1930s. It was used for a while quite innocently and picked up the Press and non-caving public. Eventually the word became one of derision among cavers themselves for novices and dilettantes, and so faded away from caving publications; but this development was not realised by non-cavers.

There is a fancy word, Speleologist - this describes a caver who studies scientifically the caves themselves (geology etc) and their contents (wildlife etc.). The first e should really be the ae dipthong character, but it is usually now emasculated to just e. Notably perhaps, one of the world's leading speleology learned-journals is called simply Cave and Karst Science.

Answer 2

people who go into caves and explore them! they are also called cavers but spelunkers sounds better.

people who go into caves and explore them! they are also called cavers but spelunkers sounds better.

Curious - duplicated answer!

To whom exactly does "spelunker" sound better?

Not to anyone who knows anything about caving, for a start. Let along anything about speleology (scientific study of caves and their natural contents).

The word was invented by a couple of American cavers in the 1930s because they thought it sounded fancy, but with time it became a term of contempt by cavers themselves for novices and dilettantes, and is not longer used in caving. It never caught on outside of America.

The words "cave", "caving" and "caver" are the universal English-language terms.

Northern English cavers used to use the terms "pot-holer" and "pot-holing" since Yorkshire has many open shafts called, somewhat erroneously, "pot-holes", and the word lives on in some caving-club names, but even there everyone now is a "caver".

[Note: this was not my original text. I re-wrote it because since then, I discovered the history of the word 'spelunker'.]