corpus

corpus — noun

1. An organised electronic collection of authentic texts or speech recordings, used

1.nounC1
Definition

An organised electronic collection of authentic texts or speech recordings, used by language researchers to analyse word patterns and sentence structures.

Example

The linguist used a million-word corpus of daily conversations to study how teenagers use slang.

corpus of + [type of text/speech] as a research tool

Imani built her own corpus from Taiwanese news articles to compare formal and informal vocabulary.

Common collocations
  • spoken corpus
  • written corpus
  • corpus data
  • corpus analysis
  • build a corpus
  • corpus of texts
Synonyms
  • database

    more general term for any organised data store; 'corpus' implies language data specifically

  • text collection

    explicitly describes written materials; less precise than 'corpus'

  • archive

    stresses historical preservation rather than analytical use

Grammar Patterns

a corpus of + [text type]

Usage Note

The plural form is corpora (the standard academic plural) or sometimes corpuses. Frequently appears in the compound noun 'corpus linguistics' to name the field of study.

Common Mistakes

The police found a corpus of evidence at the crime scene.
The police found a body of evidence at the crime scene.
'corpus' in this linguistic sense is not used for physical evidence; use 'body of evidence' instead.

2. The complete writings of one author, or all the works on a single topic brought

2.nounB2
Definition

The complete writings of one author, or all the works on a single topic brought together as a set.

Example

Shirin is writing her thesis on the complete corpus of 20th-century Irish poetry.

corpus of + [topic/genre] for collected writings on a subject

The museum published a corpus of ancient Egyptian love songs found on papyrus fragments.

Common collocations
  • complete corpus
  • corpus of works
  • corpus of writings
  • entire corpus
Synonyms
  • oeuvre

    French loanword used only for one creator's entire output; more specific than 'corpus'

  • body of work

    more conversational equivalent; less formal than 'corpus'

  • collected works

    the most transparent synonym; often used in book titles

Grammar Patterns

a corpus of + [author/genre]

Usage Note

Often used in academic literary criticism. The word 'oeuvre' is a near-synonym but is used only for a single artist's complete body of work, not for a subject-based collection.

Common Mistakes

I borrowed a corpus of poems from the library.
I borrowed a collection of poems from the library.
'corpus' implies a complete or near-complete set of works, not an ordinary anthology.

3. The central or main mass of a body organ, as opposed to its outer covering, neck

3.nounC1
Definition

The central or main mass of a body organ, as opposed to its outer covering, neck, or other specialised regions.

Example

In anatomy class, students learn that the corpus of the stomach produces digestive acid.

the corpus of + [organ] — the main functional region

The MRI scan showed a small cyst in the corpus of Kenji's pancreas.

Common collocations
  • corpus of the stomach
  • corpus of the uterus
  • corpus of the pancreas
  • corpus callosum
Synonyms
  • body

    the everyday English term; 'corpus' is the formal Latin-derived alternative

  • main body

    more descriptive, less technical than 'corpus'

  • trunk

    used for some organs (e.g. trunk of the pancreas); less common overall

Grammar Patterns

the corpus of + [organ]

corpus + [Latin anatomical term]

Usage Note

This sense appears most often in fixed anatomical compounds such as corpus callosum (the band connecting brain hemispheres), corpus luteum (a temporary gland in the ovary), and corpus cavernosum (spongy tissue in the penis). In general medical writing, the phrase 'body of the [organ]' is more common than 'corpus'.

Common Mistakes

He broke the corpus of his arm.
He broke the shaft of his arm (bone).
'corpus' in anatomy refers to the main part of soft organs, not bones or limbs.

Word family

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

All four words refer to groups of items brought together, but they differ in purpose and scope. A corpus is specifically a structured body of language material (texts or speech), built for linguistic analysis — dictionaries, grammar books, and language researchers use corpora to observe real usage patterns. A database is a broader term for any organised set of data (customer records, product information) stored electronically, with no necessary link to language. An archive emphasises preservation of historical or original materials, often for reference rather than computational analysis. A collection is the most general term: a group of any kind of objects (stamps, paintings, documents) assembled by one person or institution. For example, a library might archive rare manuscripts, display a collection of first editions in its exhibition hall, and also maintain a searchable corpus of those texts for linguistic study.

corpus ↗database ↗archive ↗collection ↗

Common collocations

Prepositions

  • corpus of

Etymology

LatinEnglish

Borrowed directly from Latin corpus, meaning 'body'. In ancient Rome the word already had an extended sense of 'a collection of writings' — the Corpus Juris Civilis was a body of civil law compiled under Emperor Justinian. The linguistic sense (an organised collection of texts for study) emerged in the mid-20th century alongside computer-based language analysis. The anatomical meaning preserves the original Latin sense most faithfully, appearing in compound terms like corpus callosum ('tough body') in medical Latin.