Incorporation

How to spell incorporation

13 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce incorporation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does incorporation mean?

1. nounThe act of combining separate elements into a single unified whole.
2. nounThe legal process of forming a company or corporation as a recognised legal body.

Incorporation in a sentence

• The report recommends the incorporation of customer feedback into the new design.

• The lawyer handled the incorporation of the start-up in just two weeks.

• Her thesis examined the incorporation of recycled materials into modern construction.

• Articles of incorporation must be filed with the relevant authority.

Where does incorporation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb incorporare, formed from in- meaning 'into' and corpus meaning 'body'. The literal idea was 'to make into one body', that is, to absorb separate parts into a single mass or organism. Late Latin used incorporatio for that act of combining, and the term passed into English through Old French in the late 1300s, initially in religious and philosophical writing about uniting things into one whole. By the 1600s it had taken on its legal sense, describing the way a group of people is constituted as a single 'body' in law, a corporation, with the spelling preserving the corpus root that also gives us 'corpse', 'corps', and 'corporate'. Keeping that corpor element in mind helps with the spelling: the middle is built on the Latin word for body, not a vague 'cor' sound.

How the word is built

• in- (into)
• corpor (body, from Latin corpus)
• -ation (noun of action)