corporation

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A body that is granted a charter recognizing it as a separate legal entity having its own rights, privileges, and liabilities distinct from those of its members.
2. n. Such a body created for purposes of government. Also called body corporate.
3. n. A group of people combined into or acting as one body.
4. n. Informal A protruding abdominal region; a potbelly.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. An artificial person, created by law, or under authority of law, from a group or succession of natural persons, and having a continuous existence irrespective of that of its members, and powers and liabilities different from those of its members. Corporations have sometimes been treated by the law as fictions, intangible and invisible, existing only in contemplation of law; and sometimes rather as associations of individuals who may act together in the use of powers conferred by law, under responsibilities more limited than if acting as individuals. A corporation aggregate is a corporation consisting of several members at the same time, as a railroad company or the governing body of a college or a hospital. Corporations aggregate are formed, in England and her colonies and in the United States, only by express permission of law, either by special charter or upon complying with the forms and regulations prescribed by some general statute; and their rights, duties, and manner of organization and dissolution are generally minutely regulated by statute. A corporation sole is a corporation which consists of but one person at a time, as a king, or a bishop and his successors, regarded for some purposes as a single individual.
2. n. The body, generally large, of a man or an animal.

Wiktionary

1. n. A group of individuals, created by law or under authority of law, having a continuous existence independent of the existences of its members, and powers and liabilities distinct from those of its members.
2. n. In Fascist Italy, a joint association of employers' and workers' representatives.
3. n. slang A protruding belly; a paunch.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A body politic or corporate, formed and authorized by law to act as a single person, and endowed by law with the capacity of succession; a society having the capacity of transacting business as an individual.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a business firm whose articles of incorporation have been approved in some state
2. n. slang for a paunch