- a legal entity that exists independently of the person or persons who have been granted
the charter creating it and that is invested with many of the rights given to individuals:
a corporation may enter into contracts, buy and sell property, etc.
- a group of people, as the mayor and aldermen of an incorporated town, legally authorized
to act as an individual
- any of the political and economic bodies forming a corporative state, each being composed
of the employers and employees in a certain industry, profession, etc.
- (informal) a large, prominent belly
< LL(Ec) corporatio,
assumption of a body, incarnation < pp. of L corporare:
; (sense 4) prob. from assoc. with , corpulent