Corps

//kɔː// noun

noun ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A battlefield formation composed of two or more divisions.
  2. 2
    A corps de ballet.

    "The performers were all creditable dancers as well as comedians […] even the largest of them cavorted about en pointe with wonderful ease, and the corps work was extremely precise in its inaccuracies."

  3. 3
    plural of corp form-of, plural
  4. 4
    Obsolete spelling of corpse. alt-of, obsolete

    "How to keep the corps ſeven dayes from corruption by anointing and waſhing, without exenteration, were an hazardable peece of art, in our choiſeſt practiſe."

  5. 5
    an army unit usually consisting of two or more divisions and their support wordnet
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  1. 6
    An organized group of people united by a common purpose.

    "diplomatic corps"

  2. 7
    a body of people associated together wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
adjutant general corpsage groupair corpsalliancearmored corpsarmy

Example

More examples

"She got her feet wet teaching while she was in the Peace Corps."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From French corps d'armée (literally “army body”), from Latin corpus (“body”). Doublet of corpse and corpus. See also English riff.

Etymology 2

Clipping.

Related phrases

avant-corpscorps de logiscorps-a-corpsdiplomatic corpsfree corpsjuste-au-corpsmarine corpspress corpsstaff corpsdead bodygovernment aidmarine group

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.