soul

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See also: Soul, soûl, Söul, and Sŏul

English[edit]

English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia

Etymology 1[edit]

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”).

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 may have come from Old English sāwol.

Alternative forms[edit]

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

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. quotations ▼
    • 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 222716698, 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. quotations ▼
    • 1918, W. B. Maxwell, chapter 22, in The Mirror and the Lamp:
      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, Roosevelt, Franklin D., The Happy Warrior Alfred E. Smith‎[1], Houghton Mifflin, OCLC 769015, OL 6719278M, 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. quotations ▼
    • 1728, Edward Young, The Love of Fame
      That he wants 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. quotations ▼
    • 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.
Quotations[edit]

For quotations using this term, see Citations:soul.

Synonyms[edit]

Derived terms[edit]
 show more ▼  

Pages starting with “soul”.

Related terms[edit]
Translations[edit]
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
show ▼Translations to be checked

Verb[edit]

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

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To endow with a soul; to furnish with a soul or mind.
    (Can we find and add a quotation of Chaucer to this entry?)
  2. To beg on All Soul's Day. quotations ▼
    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.

Derived terms[edit]

Etymology 2[edit]

Borrowed from French souler (“to satiate”).

Verb[edit]

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

  1. (obsolete) To afford suitable sustenance. quotations ▼
    (Can we find and add a quotation of Warner to this entry?)
    • 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 221024157, 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, [...]

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for soul in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.)

References[edit]

  • soul at 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.

Anagrams[edit]

Czech[edit]

Noun[edit]

soul m

  1. soul (music style)

Further reading[edit]

  • soul in Kartotéka Novočeského lexikálního archivu

Finnish[edit]

Etymology[edit]

Borrowed from English soul.

Noun[edit]

soul

  1. soul music

Declension[edit]

more ▼Inflection of soul (Kotus type 5/risti, no gradation)
nominative soul —
genitive soulin —
partitive soulia —
illative souliin —
more ▼Possessive forms of soul (type risti)

Anagrams[edit]

French[edit]

Alternative forms[edit]

Etymology 1[edit]

From Latin satullus, diminutive of satur.

Pronunciation[edit]

Adjective[edit]

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

  1. drunk
    Synonym: ivre
    À colombe soûle cerises sont amères.
    To a drunk dove, even cherries are bitter.
Derived terms[edit]

Etymology 2[edit]

Borrowed from English soul.

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

soul f (uncountable)

  1. soul, soul music

Further reading[edit]

Hungarian[edit]

Etymology[edit]

Borrowed from English soul.

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

soul (plural soulok)

  1. (music) soul music

Declension[edit]

more ▼Inflection (stem in -o-, back harmony)
more ▼Possessive forms of soul

Derived terms[edit]

Italian[edit]

Etymology[edit]

Borrowed from English soul.

Pronunciation[edit]

  • IPA(key): /ˈsol/, (careful style) /ˈsowl/[1]

Noun[edit]

soul m or f (invariable)

  1. soul music

References[edit]

  1. ^ soul in Luciano Canepari, Dizionario di Pronuncia Italiana (DiPI)

Anagrams[edit]

Old French[edit]

Adjective[edit]

soul m (oblique and nominative feminine singular soule)

  1. Alternative form of sol

Declension[edit]

show ▼Declension of soul

Polish[edit]

Etymology[edit]

Borrowed from English soul.

Pronunciation[edit]

  • IPA(key): //sɔwl// invalid IPA characters (//)

Noun[edit]

soul m inan

  1. soul music

Declension[edit]

show ▼Declension of soul

Portuguese[edit]

Etymology[edit]

Borrowed from English soul.

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

soul m (uncountable)

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

Spanish[edit]

Etymology[edit]

Borrowed from English soul.

Noun[edit]

soul m (uncountable)

  1. soul, soul music

Further reading[edit]

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