{
  "id": "corporation.business",
  "term": "corporation",
  "sense": "business",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 11,
  "arena": "dictionary",
  "domain": "corporate",
  "style": null,
  "definition": "a company that is a legal distinct entity from its members",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "company.economic",
      "legal.law",
      "organization.administrative",
      "distinct.attribute",
      "entities.object",
      "member.social"
    ],
    "interaction": "the company is given legal status and organized as an administrative body, creating a distinct entity",
    "novel_properties": [
      "legal separateness from members",
      "continuing existence independent of membership",
      "capacity to act as a single entity under law"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "Apple Inc. files taxes separately from its employees and shareholders.",
      "domain": "economics"
    },
    {
      "text": "The East India Company waged war and negotiated treaties as a legal person.",
      "domain": "institutions"
    },
    {
      "text": "Enron Corporation's bankruptcy in 2001 erased shareholder equity but left legal obligations intact.",
      "domain": "business"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "company.economic",
      "note": "is-a",
      "type": "is-a"
    },
    {
      "id": "organization.administrative",
      "note": "is-a",
      "type": "is-a"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "corporation",
    "corporations"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "openrouter:openai/gpt-oss-120b",
    "date": "2026-07-29",
    "confidence": 0.6,
    "reconciled": {
      "by": "openrouter:qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-2507",
      "date": "2026-07-31",
      "changed": "components",
      "note": "Added missing constitutive concepts that the definition depends on: 'distinct.attribute', 'entities.object', and 'member.social'. Definition was accurate and concise, so kept unchanged."
    }
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-corporation.business"
}