1. A query processing system for processing a query having one or more query terms using formally represented knowledge against a corpus of documents, the system comprising: a knowledge base containing a plurality of pieces of formally represented knowledge, wherein each piece of formally represented knowledge further comprises an item that has been edited or analyzed, the formally represented knowledge further comprising one or more synsets wherein each synset contains a group of terms that have a same meaning, one or more taxonomies wherein each taxonomy contains one or more synsets in a subject matter area that are organized from a synset having a general meaning to a synset having a specific meaning, one or more ontologies wherein each ontology contains one or more synsets associated with an area of interest and one or more facets wherein each facet is associated with a particular ontology and wherein a document is associated with the facet when the document contains the one or more synsets associated with the facet; and a computer system having one or more software pieces each having a plurality of lines of computer instructions wherein the computer instructions are executed by the computer system, the software pieces further comprising a query engine that expands the one or more query terms of the query using the one or more synsets and the one or more taxonomies in the knowledge base to generate an expanded query, selects an interpretation of a concept from the expanded query and the corpus of documents, selects one or more facets that match the interpretation of the expanded query based on the corpus of documents and performs a deep concept query using the interpretation of the expanded query and the selected one or more facets against the corpus of documents.