incorporeal

Imagine a ghost drifting through walls: that's incorporeal. It describes something that has no physical body or solid form, so you cannot touch or hold it. In stories, this often means spirits, ghosts, or angels. It can also describe things like ideas, feelings, or rights, which are real in an important way even though they are not physical things.

The word comes from corpus, Latin for "body," so in-corporeal literally means "without a body." You might describe a spirit as an incorporeal being, or speak of incorporeal rights such as ownership or a patent. The word is most at home in writing about religion, philosophy, law, and the supernatural.

Incorporeal describes something that lacks physical form or material substance. It is the direct opposite of corporeal, which means having a physical body. If something is incorporeal, it is not made of matter in the ordinary, touchable sense. You cannot hold it in your hand, weigh it, or point to it as a solid object.

Think about concepts like love, justice, or faith. These can shape our lives deeply, but they are not physical objects. In that sense, they are incorporeal. In stories and religious writing, ghosts, spirits, and angels are also often described as incorporeal because they are imagined as existing without a flesh-and-blood body. In legal and philosophical contexts, the word can also be used for "incorporeal rights," such as a patent or a right of ownership, which have real value even though they have no physical form.

The term is frequently used in literature, philosophy, religion, and law when people discuss the soul, supernatural beings, abstract ideas, or non-physical rights. You might read about an incorporeal spirit in a haunted house story, or about incorporeal property in a legal text.

The word is not usually for ordinary physical things, even very light or hard-to-catch ones. Instead, it is mainly used for what has no body at all, or no material existence at all. So when you come across something described as a spirit without form, an abstract quality, or a legal right that exists only in law and thought, incorporeal is the right word.