Corporates

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A collection of companies or entities typically united for commercial purposes acting as a single entity
2. Businesses or organizations characterized by a legal status that allows them to operate independently; groups of companies collaborating for mutual benefit
3. Entities recognized by law as having their own rights, separate from their owners, often involved in business activities or partnerships

Etymology: The plural "corporates" is simply the plural of "corporate," and the story behind it runs through a Latin verb meaning "to make into a body." That verb, "corporare," came from "corpus," the Latin word for body, and its past participle "corporatus" gave English an adjective meaning "embodied" or "constituted as a legal body." Middle English had a verb "corporaten," meaning to incorporate or to constitute as a legal corporation, first attested in 1398. The adjective "corporate" appears in English from 1429, and it carried the sense of physical or bodily before it took on its commercial meaning. The noun arrived much later, in 1849, when the adjective was turned into a noun for a business or group of businesses. The plural "corporates" describes those entities, and its present sense of companies working together for shared benefit developed from that legal idea of a single body formed from many people.

Synonyms: companies, entities

Antonyms: individuals