11. A computer implemented query processing method for processing a query having one or more query terms using formally expressed knowledge against a corpus of documents based on a knowledge base containing a plurality of pieces of formally expressed 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, the method comprising: expanding, using a hardware query engine, 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; selecting an interpretation of a concept from the expanded query and the corpus of documents; selecting one or more facets that match the interpretation of the expanded query based on the corpus of documents; and performing, using the hardware query engine, a deep concept query using the expanded query and the selected one or more facets against a corpus of documents.
12. The method of claim 11 , wherein expanding the query terms further comprises expanding, when a particular query term matches a particular term in a particular synset, the query based on the particular synset and retrieving one or more documents from the corpus of documents having at least one of the group of terms contained in the synset.