1. Body of Work: This is the most frequent meaning. It refers to a collection of written or spoken material, usually of a specific type or on a particular subject. For example:
* Corpus of Shakespearean plays: A collection of all the plays written by William Shakespeare.
* Corpus of medical literature: A compilation of research papers, articles, and other publications in the field of medicine.
* Corpus of online reviews: A database of customer reviews collected from websites and apps.
2. Body or Substance: This meaning is less common, but still important. It refers to the physical body of something, or a substantial amount of something. For example:
* Corpus of the church: The body of believers in a particular religious denomination.
* Corpus of evidence: The sum total of evidence presented in a legal case.
* Corpus of knowledge: A large and comprehensive body of information on a subject.
3. In Linguistics: In linguistics, a corpus is a large collection of text and speech used to study language and its variations. It can be used to train language models, analyze linguistic patterns, and create dictionaries.
4. In Law: In legal contexts, "corpus" can refer to the body of a deceased person, particularly in criminal investigations.
5. In Biology: "Corpus" can be used in scientific names of certain structures in biology, such as the corpus callosum in the brain.
The specific meaning of "corpus" will depend on the context in which it is used. It's always best to consider the surrounding information to understand the intended meaning.