soul
nounadjectiveverbverbtop 1 000 in film dialogue
- United Kingdom//səʊl//
- United Kingdom/[sɔʊɫ]/
- United Kingdom/[sɒʊɫ]/
- United States//soʊl//
- Canada/[so̞ːɫ]/
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
- 1
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.
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.
Flowey: See that heart? That is your SOUL, the very culmination of your being!
- 2
The spirit or essence of anything.
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.
"There's a vibrancy that comes from the building's historic soul metting the rhythm of the Caribbean," says Monnier.
- 3
Life, energy, vigor.
That he vvants Algebra he muſt confeſs. / But not a ſoul to give our arms ſucceſs.
- 4
Cultural consciousness and pride among people of African American heritage.
- 5
A strong positive feeling of intense sensitivity and emotional fervor conveyed especially by African American performers.
- 6
Soul music.
- 7
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.
Ordo Malleus''' Inquisitor: I hereby sign the death warrant of an entire world, and consign a million souls to oblivion.
- 8
An individual life.
Fifty souls were lost when the ship sank.
- 9
A kind of submanifold involved in the soul theorem of Riemannian geometry.
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 an 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.
adjective
- 1
Characteristic of or pertaining to African American culture.
soul music
soul food
verb
- 1
obsoleteTo endow with a soul or mind.
- 2
To beg on All Soul's Day.
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.
verb
- 1
obsoleteTo feed or nourish.
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, [...]
Etymology
Borrowed from French souler (“to satiate”).
Forms
- plural
- souls
- past tense
- souled
- past participle
- souled
- present participle
- souling
- third person singular
- souls
soul · 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.
sound · Healthy.Sound · The strait that separates Zealand (an island of Denmark) from…sounding · The action of the verb to sound.