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corporation

nouncommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˌkɔː.pəˈɹeɪ.ʃən//
  • Canada//ˌkɔɹ.pəˈɹeɪ.ʃən//
  • Canada//ˌkɔɹ.pɚˈeɪ.ʃən//

A body corporate, created by law or under authority of law, having a continuous existence independent of the existences of its members, and powers and liabilities distinct from those of its members.

noun

  1. 1

    A body corporate, created by law or under authority of law, having a continuous existence independent of the existences of its members, and powers and liabilities distinct from those of its members.

    That the young Mr. Churchills liked—but they did not like him coming round of an evening and drinking weak whisky-and-water while he held forth on railway debentures and corporation loans. Mr. Barrett, however, by fawning and flattery, seemed to be able to make not only Mrs. Churchill but everyone else do what he desired.

    With his twin notes, Mr. Musk waded directly into a fractious debate over the right way for corporations to bring workers back to the office during the coronavirus pandemic.

  2. 2

    The municipal governing body of a borough or city.

  3. 3

    historicalIn Fascist Italy, a joint association of employers' and workers' representatives.

  4. 4

    datedA protruding belly.

    [The Rector], looming large in full canonicals, walking, as became a beneficed priest, under the canopy of a shovel-hat, with the dignity of an ample corporation, the embellishment of the squarest and vastest of black coats, and the support of the stoutest of gold-headed canes.

    'You'd be surprised,' said Stanley, as though this were intensely interesting, 'at the number of chaps at the club who have got a corporation.'

    He was a big chap with a corporation already, and a flat face rather like Dora's, and he had a thin black moustache.

    The sergeant was a goner. There was only one way to save him, and he threw himself on top, hurling the man to the ground. He lay covering his corporation with as much as his body and limbs would allow.

Etymology

From Middle English corporacion, corporation, from Late Latin corporatio (“assumption of a body”), from Latin corporatus, past participle of corporare (“to form into a body”); see corporate. By surface analysis, corporate + -ion. (protruding belly): Perhaps a play on the word corpulence.

Forms

plural
corporations
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).