corpus

Definition

A collection of written or spoken texts.

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin corpus (“body”). Doublet of corpse, corps, and riff.

Example Sentences

• "No one suggests that Browning intended to mean vagina when he wrote “owls and bats, / Cowls and twats,” because the context does not allow for it, nor does the greater context of the Browning corpus."
• "A corpus approach is a useful methodology for observing, describing and interpreting the stylistic features of language in literary and non-literary texts."
• "Today, computer databases and corpora infinitely increase the ease of this type of research, but the collecting process remains essentially the same."