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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 have 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 broadbandinternet 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
Times, Sunday Times  https://www.thetimes.co.uk 
The Guardian  https://www.theguardian.com 
The Sun  https://www.thesun.co.uk 
Christianity Today  https://www.christianitytoday.com 
The Times Literary Supplement  https://www.the-tls.co.uk 
Smithsonian  https://www.si.edu 
Houston Chronicle  https://www.houstonchronicle.com 
ST  https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times 
Globe and Mail  https://www.theglobeandmail.com 
canada.com  https://o.canada.com 
Mail and Guardian  https://mg.co.za 
Chicago Sun-Times  https://chicago.suntimes.com 
Time Magazine  https://time.com 
SA Star  https://www.iol.co.za/the-star