soul
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: enpr: sōl
ipa: /səʊl/
ipa: [sɔʊɫ]
ipa: [sɒʊɫ]
ipa: /soʊl/
ipa: [so̞ːɫ]
ipa: /səʉl/
ipa: /sɐʉl/
ipa: /sɐʉl/
rhymes: -əʊl
homophone: Seoul
homophone: sole
homophone: sowl
Forms: form: souls
form: sowl
form: soule
Etymology: From Middle English soule, sowle, saule, sawle, from Old English sāwol (“soul, life, spirit, being”), from Proto-West Germanic *saiwalu, from Proto-Germanic *saiwalō (“soul”), of uncertain ultimate origin (see there for further information).
Cognates
Cognate with Scots saul, sowel (“soul”), Saterland Frisian Seele (“soul”), West Frisian siel (“soul”), Alemannic German Seel (“soul”), Central Franconian Siel (“soul”), Dutch ziel (“soul”), German Seele (“soul”), German Low German Seel (“soul”), Luxembourgish Séil (“soul, spirit”), Vilamovian zejł, zəjł, zyił (“soul”), Gothic 𐍃𐌰𐌹𐍅𐌰𐌻𐌰 (saiwala, “soul”). Scandinavian homonyms seem to have been borrowed from Old Saxon sēola. Modern Danish sjæl (“soul”), Icelandic sál (“soul”), Norwegian Bokmål sjel (“soul”), Norwegian Nynorsk sjel, sål (“soul”), Swedish själ (“soul”), Finnish sielu (“soul”) may have come from Old English sāwol.
Senses: examples: text: 1836, Hans Christian Andersen (translated into English by Mrs. H. B. Paull in 1872), The Little Mermaid
"Among the daughters of the air," answered one of them. "A mermaid has not an immortal soul, nor can she obtain one unless she wins the love of a human being. On the power of another hangs her eternal destiny. But the daughters of the air, although they do not possess an immortal soul, can, by their good deeds, procure one for themselves.
text: No matter how early I came down, I would find him on the veranda, smoking cigarettes, or[…]. And at last I began to realize in my harassed soul that all elusion was futile, and to take such holidays as I could get, when he was off with a girl, in a spirit of thankfulness.
ref: 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter IV, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC, page 46:
text: Flowey: See that heart? That is your SOUL, the very culmination of your being!
ref: 2015 September 15, Toby Fox, Undertale, Linux, Microsoft Windows, OS X:
topics: arts
folklore
history
human-sciences
lifestyle
literature
media
publishing
religion
sciences
glosses: The spirit or essence of a person usually thought to consist of one's thoughts and personality, often believed to live on after the person's death.
examples: text: From another point of view, it was a place without a soul. The well-to-do had hearts of stone; the rich were brutally bumptious; the Press, the Municipality, all the public men, were ridiculously, vaingloriously self-satisfied.
ref: 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XXII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
text: It is possible with only these qualities for a man to be a reasonably efficient President, but there is one thing more needed to make him a great President. It is that quality of soul which makes a man loved by little children, by dumb animals, that quality of soul which makes him a strong help to all those in sorrow or in trouble, that quality which makes him not merely admired, but loved by all the people - the quality of sympathetic understanding of the human heart, of real interest in one's fellow men.
ref: 1928, Franklin D. Roosevelt, The Happy Warrior Alfred E. Smith, Houghton Mifflin, →OCLC, →OL, pages 36–37:
glosses: The spirit or essence of anything.
examples: text: That he vvants Algebra he muſt confeſs. / But not a ſoul to give our arms ſucceſs.
ref: 1725, [Edward Young], “Satire III. To the Right Honourable Mr. Dodington.”, in Love of Fame, the Universal Passion. In Seven Characteristical Satires, 4th edition, London: […] J[acob] and R[ichard] Tonson […], published 1741, →OCLC, page 52:
glosses: Life, energy, vigor.
topics: entertainment
lifestyle
music
glosses: Soul music.
examples: 18 January 1915, D. H. Lawrence, letter to William Hopkin
I want to gather together about twenty souls and sail away from this world of war and squalor and found a little colony where there shall be no money but a sort of communism as far as necessaries of life go, and some real decency.
glosses: A person, especially as one among many.
examples: text: Fifty souls were lost when the ship sank.
glosses: An individual life.
topics: mathematics
sciences
glosses: A kind of submanifold involved in the soul theorem of Riemannian geometry.
Synonyms: sense: spirit or essence of anything
word: crux
word: gist
Derived terms: after one's own soul
album-oriented soul
All Souls' Day
bare one's soul
bless my soul
blue-eyed soul
body and soul
brevity is the soul of wit
brown-eyed soul
cut away one's soul
dark night of the soul
dead soul
deep soul
ensoul
God rest her soul
God rest his soul
God rest their soul
heart and soul
hip hop soul
keep body and soul together
keep soul and body together
kindred soul
lay bare one's soul
life and soul of the party
Lord rest his soul
lost soul
may God have mercy on your soul
neo soul
neo-soul
northern soul
not a living soul
not a soul
object-soul
old soul
pour one's soul out
pour out one's soul
psychedelic soul
rest his soul
rest one's soul
sell one's soul
sell one's soul to the Devil
sell one's soul to the devil
shiver my soul
soul-ale
soul bell
soul blues
soul-blues
soul brother
soul cake
soul-cake
soul conjecture
soul-crushing
soul-crushingly
soul-destroying
souled
soul food
soul fragment
soulful
soulfully
soulfulness
soulish
soul kiss
soul knell
soullike
soul link
soul loss
soul-love
soulmate
soul mate
soul music
soul patch
soul roll
soul-search
soul search
soul-searcher
soul-searching
soul searching
soul-shaking
soul sister
soul sleep
soul-stirring
soul-sucking
soul theorem
soul tie
the eyes are the window to the soul
tripartite soul
upon my soul
white soul
world soul
world-soul
world's soul
Related terms: mind
spirit