From Middle English soule, sowle, saule, sawle, from Old English sāwol, from Proto-West Germanic *saiwalu, from Proto-Germanic *saiwalō, of uncertain ultimate origin (see there for further information).

• • (RP) IPA: /səʊl/, [sɒʊɫ]
  • (New Zealand, Australia) IPA: /sɐʉl/, [sɒʊɫ]
  • (America) IPA: /soʊl/
  • (Canada) IPA: [so̞ːɫ]

soul

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.

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

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

• mind
• spirit

• French: âme
• German: Seele
• Italian: anima
• Portuguese: alma
• Russian: душа́
• Spanish: alma

• French: âme
• German: Geist
• Portuguese: ânimo
• Russian: душа́

• French: soul
• German: Soul
• Italian: soul
• Portuguese: soul
• Russian: со́ул

• French: âme
• German: Seele
• Italian: anima, persona
• Portuguese: alma

soul (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

Borrowed from French souler.

soul (souls, present participle souling; simple past and past participle souled)

1. (obsolete) To feed or nourish.