corporeal (adj.)

"matter of any kind," literally "a body," (plural corpora), late 14c., "body," from Latin corpus, literally "body" (see corporeal). The sense of "body of a person" (mid-15c. in English) and "collection of facts or things" (1727 in English) both were present in Latin.

Also used in various medical phrases, such as corpus callosum (1706, literally "tough body"), corpus luteum (1788, literally "yellow body"). Corpus Christi (late 14c.), feast of the Blessed Sacrament, is kept on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday. The city in Texas is named after the bay, which was so called by Spanish explorer Alonso Álvarez de Pineda, who discovered it on Corpus Christi day in 1519.

"to rub or scour to brightness;" figuratively, "to clear from taint or stain, renew the glory or brightness of; renovate," late 14c. (implied mid-13c. in the surname Furbisher), from Old French forbiss-, present-participle stem of forbir "to polish, burnish; mend, repair" (12c., Modern French fourbir). This is from a Germanic source, from Proto-Germanic *furbjan "cause to have a (good) appearance" (compare Old High German furban "to polish"), from PIE *prep- "to appear," which is perhaps identical with *kwrep- "body, appearance" (see corporeal). Related: Furbished; furbishing.

The Old English cognate of the Germanic verbs, feormian (with unetymological -m-) meant "to clean, to rub bright, to polish." The surname Frobisher is a metathesized form of the agent noun. "This was a business of considerable importance when armour and arms were in general use, and were in continual need of furbishing, or scrubbing" [Wright, "Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies"].