It can bear two different meanings: (a) The legal state of affairs that is constituted when a person requests the competent authority to grant him a patent and that request is still outstanding. (b) The content of the document or documents which that person filed with a view to initiating the above; most pertinently, a description of the invention together with at least one claim purporting to define it. The first of those the request for a legal privilege to which you will be entitled if your application be well founded is an institutional fact, and is temporal by its very nature. It ceases to exist as soon as your application is withdrawn, is refused, or is granted. The second of those, the informational content of the document as filed (or in other, prosaic words, the piece of paper), is a historical fact that never goes away, no matter what the Patent Office does, or anyone else does. It exists in perpetuity. The expression "application" is often employed without being conscious of its ambiguity. The expression is capable of misleading even experienced professionals