Corporeal vs Corporal? Learn with Mind Tricks

Corporeal vs Corporal

These two words say about body, but in very different way. One says about human body and second says about physical world. Let's see more subtle meaning of these two words.

Definition of Corporeal (Adj.)

• It means involving or relating to the physical world rather than spiritual world.
• that can be touched; having or consisting of a physical body or form

1. "that which is created is of necessity corporeal and visible and tangible"- Benjamin Jowett
2. This signal is aural rather than corporeal.
3. It was not corporeal, something out of this world.

Definition of Corporal (Adj./N)

• It means of or relating to the human body, and it is mostly used in the phrase corporal punishment, it means hitting, cutting, beating, biting a human body.
• As a noun it means an officer in the army or marines with  a rank below sergeant

1. Corporal punishment should be abolished.
2. Men want women only for their corporal satisfaction.

Mind Trick:

Both of the words derive from the Latin corpus, ' a body'. Corporal is made up of corpus + al (an adjective suffix means something or someone related to). Hence corporal means of or related to body.

Here read more about "al" suffix

With the word Corporeal, we shall use trick. Corporeal= Corpo + real, corpo means body and real means something existing or happening not imagined; in this way, we can learn corporeal tells about body of real world not imagination or spiritual.

Beware of spelling 
Corporal has no e; Corporeal has an "e" between r and a; you can memorise corpo + real.

According to H.W. Fowler:

Corporal means of the human body, and is common in corporal punishment; it is also rarely used with deformity, beauty, defects, and such words, instead of usual personal or bodily. Corporeal means of the nature of body, material, tangible; so our corporeal habitation (the body).

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