soul

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). Cognate with Scots saul, sowel (“soul”), North Frisian siel, sial (“soul”), Saterland Frisian Seele (“soul”), West Frisian siel (“soul”), Dutch ziel (“soul”), German Seele (“soul”) Scandinavian homonyms seem to have been borrowed from Old Saxon *siala. Modern Danish sjæl, Swedish själ, Norwegian sjel, Icelandic sál, Finnish sielu may have come from Old English sāwol.

• sowl (archaic)
• soule (obsolete)

• enPR: sōl
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /səʊl/, [sɔʊɫ], [sɒʊɫ]
  • (General American) IPA^(key): /soʊl/

    • Audio (California):

      (file)

  • (Canada) IPA^(key): [so̞ːɫ]
  • (General Australian) IPA^(key): /səʉl/, /sɐʉl/
  • (New Zealand) IPA^(key): /sɐʉl/
• Rhymes: -əʊl
• Homophones: Seoul, sole, sowl

soul (countable and uncountable, plural souls)

1. (religion, folklore) 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.
   • 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.

   • 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:

     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.

   • 2015 September 15, Toby Fox, Undertale, Linux, Microsoft Windows, OS X:

     Flowey: See that heart? That is your SOUL, the very culmination of your being!

2. The spirit or essence of anything.
   • 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XXII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:

     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.

   • 1928, Franklin D. Roosevelt, The Happy Warrior Alfred E. Smith‎^[1], Houghton Mifflin, →OCLC, →OL, pages 36–37:

     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.

3. Life, energy, vigor.
   • 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:

     That he vvants Algebra he muſt confeſs. / But not a ſoul to give our arms ſucceſs.

4. (music) Soul music.
5. A person, especially as one among many.
   • 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.

6. An individual life.

   Fifty souls were lost when the ship sank.

7. (mathematics) A kind of submanifold involved in the soul theorem of Riemannian geometry.

For quotations using this term, see Citations:soul.

• (spirit or essence of anything): crux, gist; See also Thesaurus:gist
• (a person): See also Thesaurus:person

English terms starting with “soul”

• mind
• spirit

soul (third-person singular simple present souls, present participle souling, simple past and past participle souled)

1. (obsolete, transitive) To endow with a soul or mind.

   Synonyms: besoul, ensoul

2. To beg on All Soul's Day.

   Coordinate term: trick-or-treat

   • 1981, Geoffrey Scard, Squire and tenant: life in rural Cheshire, 1760-1900, page 93:

     All Souls' Day was celebrated by souling, a custom going back to pre-Reformation days: soul cakers and mummers toured the village begging for a soul cake — a plain, round, flat cake seasoned with spices.

• besoul
• dark night of the soul

Borrowed from French souler (“to satiate”).

soul (third-person singular simple present souls, present participle souling, simple past and past participle souled)

1. (obsolete) To feed or nourish.^[1]
   • 1741, unknown [formerly attributed to Daniel Defoe], The Life and Adventures of Mrs. Christian Davies, the British Amazon, commonly called Mother Ross: […], 2nd edition, London: Printed for R[ichard] Montagu, →OCLC, part II, page 76:

     During my Stay here, I was going to take Pot-Luck with Colonel Ingram, and accidentally meeting him in the Way, I told him I deſigned to ſoul a Plate with him, [...]

• “soul”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• soul in Keywords for Today: A 21st Century Vocabulary, edited by The Keywords Project, Colin MacCabe, Holly Yanacek, 2018.
• “soul”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.

• Luso-, luso-

soul m inan

1. soul (music style)

This noun needs an inflection-table template.

• “soul”, in Kartotéka Novočeského lexikálního archivu (in Czech)

Borrowed from English soul.

• IPA^(key): /ˈsou̯l/, [ˈs̠o̞u̯l]
• Rhymes: -oul
• Hyphenation^(key): soul

soul

1. soul music

• “soul”, in Kielitoimiston sanakirja [Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish]‎^[2] (in Finnish) (online dictionary, continuously updated), Kotimaisten kielten keskuksen verkkojulkaisuja 35, Helsinki: Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskus (Institute for the Languages of Finland), 2004–, retrieved 2023-07-03

• Sulo, solu, sulo, ulos

soul (Piemontais)

1. Alternative form of sol (“alone”)

• soul in Lo trèsor Arpitan – on arpitan.eu

See saoul.

• IPA^(key): /su/
• Homophones: sou, souls, sous

soul (feminine soule, masculine plural souls, feminine plural soules)

1. post-1990 spelling of soûl, itself an alternative form of saoul (“drunk”)

• souler

Borrowed from English soul.

• IPA^(key): /sol/, /sul/

soul f (uncountable)

1. soul, soul music

• “soul”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Borrowed from English soul.

• IPA^(key): [ˈsoːl] (phonetic respelling: szól)
• Hyphenation: soul
• Homophone: szól
• Rhymes: -oːl

soul (usually uncountable, plural soulok)

1. (music) soul music

• soulzene

Borrowed from English soul.

• IPA^(key): /ˈsol/, (careful style) /ˈsowl/^[1]
• Rhymes: -ol, (careful style) -owl
• Hyphenation: (careful style) sóul

soul m or f (invariable)

1. soul music

• suol

soul

1. Alternative form of soule

soul m (oblique and nominative feminine singular soule)

1. Alternative form of sol

Unadapted borrowing from English soul, from Middle English soule, sowle, saule, sawle, from Old English sāwol, from Proto-West Germanic *saiwalu, from Proto-Germanic *saiwalō.

• IPA^(key): /ˈsɔwl/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɔwl
• Syllabification: soul

soul m inan

1. soul music

• soul in Wielki słownik języka polskiego, Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN
• soul in Polish dictionaries at PWN

Unadapted borrowing from English soul.

• (Brazil) IPA^(key): /sow/
  • Homophone: sou (when pronounced with the /w/)

soul m (uncountable)

1. (music) soul music (a music genre combining gospel music, rhythm and blues and often jazz)

Borrowed from English soul.

soul m or f or n (indeclinable)

1. soul (music)

Borrowed from English soul.

• IPA^(key): /ˈsoul/ [ˈsou̯l]
• Rhymes: -oul
• Syllabification: soul

soul m (uncountable)

1. soul, soul music

• “soul”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 2024 December 10