C1nounformallanguageacademic
US/ˈkɔːr.pəs/
UK/ˈkɔː.pəs/
a big set of real texts or recordings used to study how a language works; also, a writer's complete works
In context
Dictionary writers use a huge corpus to see how words are really used.
The corpus contains over a billion words from news and websites.
Scholars have studied the whole corpus of her poetry.
Words that go with corpus
noun + preposition
- corpus ofThey built a corpus of Vietnamese learners' essays.
adjective + noun
- large corpusA large corpus shows which collocations are common.
- spoken corpusA spoken corpus records how people really talk.
noun + noun
- corpus dataCorpus data suggest the word is becoming more popular.
- corpus linguisticsShe teaches corpus linguistics at the university.
Common mistakes
Incorrect:
We analyzed three corpuses.Correct: We analyzed three corpora.