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🏙️ A Texas city ⛪ A Christian festival 🎬 A Polish film
Corpus Christi

Corpus Christi

11 4.2
A coastal city in southern Texas on an inlet of the Gulf of Mexico
  • proper noun
  • /ˈkɔːrpəs ˈkrɪsti/
translation icon : Corpus Christi
  • Hurricane Bret (n2), which caused $20 million in damage to South Texas, touched down just 70 miles south of Corpus Christi.
  • City of Corpus Christi
  • miles from Corpus Christi

Examples

  • Mission lost to Corpus Christi Ray 36-30 in the State 4A Division I Bi-District Championships.

    Blog text (6)

  • We flew into Corpus Christi and drove the short distance to the tip of Padre Island in a rented Buick.

    Fiction book (1995)

  • I just got back from Corpus Christi.

    Blood Simple (1985)

  • We'll find someone in Corpus Christi and have them send it to us when it's done.

    Fiction book (1995)

  • Glad you enjoyed your visit to Texas; maybe next time you can visit Corpus Christi.

    Blog text (7)

  • One of the German detainees revealed that the group also has a property in Corpus Christi, Texas.

    Blog text (20)

  • The city of Corpus Christi is in the coastal bend of Texas, where hurricanes and tropical storms occur.

    Academic text (2003)

  • De la Rosa was born in 1931 in Sarita, twenty-five miles from Corpus Christi.

    Academic text (1999)

  • Public hearings were held in five locations: McAllen, Laredo, El Paso, San Antonio, and Corpus Christi.

    Blog text (7)

  • I just returned from a vacation in Corpus Christi, a beautiful coastal city in Texas.

Surface Forms

Corpus Christi main

Morphology

Corpus + Christi

This is a Latin proper name/title (literally 'body of Christ') rather than a compositional English phrase; its use as a film title/proper noun is not predictable from everyday constituent meanings and the Latin constituents are not familiar to a B1 learner. Even if a learner knew 'corpus' as 'body' and recognised 'Christi' as related to Christ, the specific reference (a film/the feast) and the idiomatic cultural sense are not derivable, so it is opaque.

Etymology

Corpus Christi (the city) got its name from the same Latin words Corpus and Christi because Spanish explorers found the bay on the 'feast day' called Corpus Christi and named the place after that day. That's why the phrase now also refers to the coastal city in Texas.