Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A part of humans regarded as immaterial, immortal, separable from the body at death, capable of moral judgment, and susceptible to happiness or misery in a future state.
  • noun This part of a human when disembodied after death.
  • noun In Aristotelian philosophy, an animating or vital principle inherent in living things and endowing them in various degrees with the potential to grow and reproduce, to move and respond to stimuli (as in the case of animals), and to think rationally (as in the case of humans).
  • noun A human.
  • noun A person considered as the embodiment of an intangible quality; a personification.
  • noun A person's emotional or moral nature.
  • noun The central or integral part; the vital core.
  • noun A sense of emotional strength or spiritual vitality held to derive from black and especially African-American cultural experience, expressed in areas such as language, social customs, religion, and music.
  • noun Strong, deeply felt emotion conveyed by a speaker, performer, or artist.
  • noun Soul music.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Anything eaten with bread; a relish, as butter, cheese, milk, or preserves; that which satisfies.
  • noun A substantial entity believed to be that in each person which lives, feels, thinks, and wills.
  • noun The moral and emotional part of man's nature; the seat of the sentiments or feelings: in distinction from intellect.
  • noun The animating or essential part; the essence: as, the soul of a song; the source of action; the chief part; hence, the inspirer or leader of any action or movement: as, the soul of an enterprise; an able commander is the soul of an army.
  • noun Fervor; fire; grandeur of mind, or other noble manifestation of the heart or moral nature.
  • noun A spiritual being; a disembodied spirit; a shade.
  • noun A human being; a person.
  • noun Synonyms and
  • noun Intellect, Spirit, etc. See mind.
  • noun Ardor, force.
  • To afford suitable sustenance; satisfy with food; satiate.
  • To endue with a soul.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective By or for African-Americans, or characteristic of their culture.
  • adjective obsolete Sole.
  • noun The spiritual, rational, and immortal part in man; that part of man which enables him to think, and which renders him a subject of moral government; -- sometimes, in distinction from the higher nature, or spirit, of man, the so-called animal soul, that is, the seat of life, the sensitive affections and phantasy, exclusive of the voluntary and rational powers; -- sometimes, in distinction from the mind, the moral and emotional part of man's nature, the seat of feeling, in distinction from intellect; -- sometimes, the intellect only; the understanding; the seat of knowledge, as distinguished from feeling. In a more general sense, “an animating, separable, surviving entity, the vehicle of individual personal existence.”
  • noun The seat of real life or vitality; the source of action; the animating or essential part.
  • noun The leader; the inspirer; the moving spirit; the heart.
  • noun Energy; courage; spirit; fervor; affection, or any other noble manifestation of the heart or moral nature; inherent power or goodness.
  • noun A human being; a person; -- a familiar appellation, usually with a qualifying epithet.
  • noun A pure or disembodied spirit.
  • noun A perceived shared community and awareness among African-Americans.
  • noun Soul music.
  • noun See Cure, n., 2.
  • noun the passing bell.
  • noun [Obs.] See Soul scot, below.
  • noun (O. Eccl. Law) A funeral duty paid in former times for a requiem for the soul.
  • intransitive verb obsolete To afford suitable sustenance.
  • transitive verb obsolete To indue with a soul; to furnish with a soul or mind.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun 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.
  • noun The spirit or essence of anything.
  • noun Life, energy, vigor.
  • noun music Soul music.
  • noun A person, especially as one among many.
  • noun An individual life.
  • verb obsolete, transitive To endue with a soul; to furnish with a soul or mind.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun deep feeling or emotion
  • noun a secular form of gospel that was a major Black musical genre in the 1960s and 1970s

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English sāwol.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English, from Old English sāwol ("soul, life, spirit, being"), from Proto-Germanic *saiwalō (“soul”). Cognate with North Frisian siel, sial ("soul"), Dutch ziel ("soul"), German Seele ("soul") (the Scandinavian forms are borrowings from the Old English).

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Examples

Comments

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  • "What profiteth a man if he gaineth the whole world but loseth his soul?"

    January 29, 2008

  • will, volition, purpose,blood, rational

    July 24, 2009

  • One day, I will show that I adopted the word SOUL. Why you ask? Because I say.

    March 31, 2022

  • SOUL is not SPIRIT. On 3/15, a combination of factors including me finding the spelling of soul happened. Soul I was spelling some other way apparently. Can't even remember. I guess I was referring to a number. Wrote some especially egregious things that seemed like justification. No way I wrote it the day after. 3/14 is suspected but it is 3/21 as the date of attack on a certain victim. Thank you Souls.

    May 9, 2022