corp

The root corp comes from Latin corpus (genitive corporis), meaning simply 'body.' At first it named the physical body — flesh and bone you could touch. From this one word, two great branches grew: one stayed literal (real bodies), the other became one of the most powerful metaphors in law and business (groups treated as if they were a single body).

The literal branch — real bodies:
- corpse — a dead body. The spelling kept its Latin p and gained a silent final e.
- corporal — 'of the body,' as in corporal punishment (punishment inflicted on the body).
- corporeal — 'having a physical body, tangible,' the opposite of spiritual or ghostly.
- corpulent — having a large body; a polite, old-fashioned word for fat.
- corpuscle — a tiny body (corpus + the diminutive -cle): a particle, or a blood cell.

The figurative branch — a body of people or things:
Here is the leap that makes this root worth knowing. Romans began calling an organized group of people a corpus — a single body made of many members. From that idea:
- corporate — formed into one body.
- corporation — a group of people legally treated as one artificial person. A company can own property, sign contracts, and be sued, exactly as if it were a human body. This 'fictional body' is the backbone of modern business.
- incorporate (in- 'into' + corpus) — to take something into the body, to absorb it; and legally, to form a company (bring people into one corporate body).
- corpus itself survived as 'a body of work' — the corpus of an author's writings, or a corpus of language data (a linguistic corpus).

Three look-alikes to keep straight:
- corps /kɔː/ — a military or organized group (army corps, the diplomatic corps). It came through French, so the ps is silent. Plural corps is also silent but pronounced /kɔːz/.
- corpse /kɔːps/ — a dead body. Here the ps is pronounced.
- corpus /ˈkɔːpəs/ — a collection of texts.
Same Latin parent, three very different jobs: an organized group, a dead body, a body of writing.

The pattern across the whole family: corp always points back to a body — whether it is one you can touch (corpse, corporal, corpulent), a tiny one (corpuscle), or an invented one made of many people (corporate, corporation, corps).