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Note on corpus examples

Example sentences have been automatically selected and may contain sensitive content that does not reflect the opinions or policies of Collins, or its parent company HarperCollins.

We welcome feedback: please report an example sentence to the Collins team.

How do we create our corpus examples?

The examples have been automatically selected from a section of our corpus. We use this multi-billion word collection of texts to research language usage and change over time. The corpus is a rich source of words in action from a wide variety of genres, allowing us to base our dictionaries on language as it is actually used. For example, evidence from the corpus shows that:

  • Nowadays, the word kith almost never appears by itself; practically all modern citations in the corpus come from the phrase kith and kin
  • Usage of the words Brexitvapehygge and selfie has all increased dramatically over the past few years
  • The way we use wireless has changed – in the past we listened to the wireless, but now it’s most commonly used alongside words like broadband, internet and Bluetooth.

Although the corpus examples were extracted using an algorithm and have not been editorially reviewed, we hope that you find the extra context a helpful addition to the main dictionary entry.

All Wikipedia examples retrieved in 2015. We acknowledge that the Wikipedia content may vary or update from time to time. If you discover any Wikipedia source that does not appear up to date, please notify us and we will address accordingly.

If you’d like to try some corpus research for yourself, why not have a look at Wordbanks Online and sign up for a free trial!

Content providers

Thanks to the following Collins Corpus content providers:

Title URL
Bella Caledonia https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/ 
canada.com https://o.canada.com 
Chicago Sun-Times https://chicago.suntimes.com 
Christianity Today https://www.christianitytoday.com 
Globe and Mail https://www.theglobeandmail.com 
Houston Chronicle https://www.houstonchronicle.com 
Mail and Guardian https://mg.co.za 
New Scientist https://www.newscientist.com/ 
Outlook India https://www.outlookindia.com/ 
Royal Society https://royalsociety.org/ 
SA Star https://www.iol.co.za/the-star 
Smithsonian https://www.si.edu 
ST https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times 
The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com 
The Sun https://www.thesun.co.uk 
The Tab https://thetab.com/ 
The Times Literary Supplement https://www.the-tls.co.uk 
Time Magazine https://time.com 
Times, Sunday Times https://www.thetimes.co.uk 
Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com 
Wikipedia https://www.wikipedia.org/