Corpora

What is a Corpus?

A corpus (in plural "corpora") is a collection of texts in a written or spoken form that is accessible through the internet. It shows how language is used in different situations, allowing language specialist to write accurate and precise dictionary entries. This way, dictionaries can be updated by closely tracking and recording all of the latest uses that the language is given by the language speakers, always within their adequate context.

So, let's see two of the corpora in action!

British National Corpus

This is what you find when you look up an expression of your liking. To do the test, I chose "in time".

There are also parallel corpora out there, such as Linguee. This one, in particular, is useful to translate phrases and expressions, because it shows you the expression used in different contexts, both in English and in whichever language interests you (in this case, Spanish). To make an example, I've chosen once again the expression "in time".