Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun An entity such as a business, municipality, or organization, that involves more than one person but that has met the legal requirements to operate as a single person, so that it may enter into contracts and engage in transactions under its own identity.
  • noun Such a body created for purposes of government.
  • noun A group of people combined into or acting as one body.
  • noun Informal A protruding abdominal region; a potbelly.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun An artificial person, created by law, or under authority of law, from a group or succession of natural persons, and having a continuous existence irrespective of that of its members, and powers and liabilities different from those of its members.
  • noun The body, generally large, of a man or an animal.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A body politic or corporate, formed and authorized by law to act as a single person, and endowed by law with the capacity of succession; a society having the capacity of transacting business as an individual.
  • noun See under Close.

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

  • noun A group of individuals, 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 In Fascist Italy, a joint association of employers' and workers' representatives.
  • noun slang A protruding belly; a paunch.

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

  • noun a business firm whose articles of incorporation have been approved in some state
  • noun slang for a paunch

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Late Latin corporatio ("assumption of a body"), from Latin coporare, past participle corporatus ("to form into a body"); see corporate.

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Examples

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  • “They have no soul to save, and no body to incarcerate.�?

    -- Baron Thurlow

    October 2, 2007