''corporate'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260915190735-00-⌔

corporate - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Adjective

corporate (comparative more corporate, superlative most corporate)

• Of or relating to an institution; institutional.
  • ✤ The one on Seventh Street is a corporate franchise.
  • ✤ But electric vehicles and the batteries that made them run became ensnared in corporate scandals, fraud, and monopolistic corruption that shook the confidence of the nation and inspired automotive upstarts.¹
  • ✤ Where we once sent love letters in a sealed envelope, or stuck photographs of our children in a family album, now such private material is despatched to servers and clouds operated by people we don’t know and will never meet. Perhaps we assume that our name, address and search preferences will be viewed by some unseen pair of corporate eyes, probably not human, and don’t mind that much.²
• Formed into a institution; incorporated.
• Unified into one body; collective.
  • ✤ the corporate authorship of the working group
  • ✤ They answer in a joint and corporate voice.³
  • ✤ I believe in the body of Christ, and the regular assembly of believers, the importance of the sacraments, and the need for corporate worship.⁴
• (colloquial) Soulless and inoffensive; sanitized and sterile, like a design from an institution.
  • ✤ It’s not that their interior decorating is horrible; it’s just that, well, it’s so corporate.

Noun

corporate (countable and uncountable, plural corporates)

• (finance) A bond issued by an institution.
  • ✤ So-called junk corporates and emerging-market debt remain generally out of favor.⁵
• A short film produced for internal use in a business, e.g. for training, rather than for a general audience.
  • ✤ Currently there are 19 members, who are all in Spotlight and belong to Equity. Areas of work include theatre, musicals, television, film, commercials, corporates and voiceovers.⁶
• (business, countable) An institution that franchises, as opposed to an individual franchise.
  • ✤ McDonald’s corporate issued a new policy today.
• (business, countable) An institution or group.
• (business, informal, uncountable) The higher managerial echelons of an institution.
  • ✤ *it came down from corporate *
  • ✤ The work could be rewarding, but corporate is micro-managing everything.

Verb

corporate (third-person singular simple present corporates, present participle corporating, simple past and past participle corporated)

• (obsolete, transitive) To incorporate.
  • ✤ This hospital of Savoy was again new founded, erected, corporated, and endowed with lands by Queen Mary⁷
• (obsolete, intransitive) To become incorporated.

Etymology 1

The adjective is first attested in 1429, the noun in 1849; from Middle English corporat(e) (“(if a true adjective) corporeal, physical, embodied; (participle/participial adjective) incorporated; corporated, constituted as a legal corporation”, used as the past participle of corporaten),⁸ from Latin corporātus, perfect passive participle of corporō (“to make into a body”) (see -ate (adjective-forming suffix)), from corpus (“body”, oblique stem in corp-) +‎ -ō (verb-forming suffix). The noun was derived by substantivization from the adjective, see -ate (noun-forming suffix).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈkɔː.pə.ɹət/, /ˈkɔː.pɹət/
• Audio (UK): 🔊
• (General American, Canada) IPA: /ˈkoɹ.pə.ɹət/, /ˈkoɹ.pɹət/
• (Australia, New Zealand) IPA: /ˈkoː.pə.ɹət/, /ˈkoː.pɹət/
• Hyphenation: cor‧por‧ate, corp‧orate

Etymology 2

First attested in 1398; from Middle English corporaten (“to incorporate, assimilate; to constitute as a legal corporation”),⁹ either from corporat(e) (“(if a true adjective) corporeal, physical”, also used as the past participle of corporaten) +‎ -en (verb-forming suffix) or directly from Latin corporātus + -en, see -ate (verb-forming suffix) and Etymology 1 for more.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈkɔː.pə.ɹeɪt/
• (General American) IPA: /ˈkɔɹ.pəɹ.eɪt/
• Rhymes: -ɔː(ɹ)pəɹət, -ɔː(ɹ)pɹət, -ɔː(ɹ)pəɹeɪt
• Hyphenation: cor‧por‧ate, corp‧orate

Printed 2026-09-15.

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Footnotes

1. 2006, Edwin Black, chapter 1, in Internal Combustion ‎${}^{[1]}$: ↩

2. 2013 June 14, Jonathan Freedland, “Obama’s once hip brand is now tainted”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 1, page 18: ↩

3. c. 1605–1608 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Tymon of Athens”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene ii]: ↩

4. 2021 [2001], John Eldredge, “John Answers Your Wild at Heart Questions”, in Wild at Heart, Expanded edition, Nelson Books, →ISBN, page 218: ↩

5. 2009 January 11, Robert D. Hershey Jr., “Look Past 2008 Stars for Gains in Bonds”, in New York Times: ↩

6. 2013, Simon Dunmore, Actors’ Yearbook 2014: ↩

7. 1598, John Stow, A Survey of London: ↩

8. “corporāten, v.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007. ↩

9. “corporāten, v.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007. ↩