soul

Soul is defined as one person, or is the spirit and essence of a person.

(noun)

  1. An example of your soul is the part of you that makes you who you are and that will live on after your death.
  2. An example of soul is the part of you that will go to heaven and be immortal, according to the the teachings of certain religions.
  3. An example of soul is any person.

YourDictionary definition and usage example. Copyright © 2013 by LoveToKnow Corp.

See soul in Webster's New World College Dictionary

noun

  1. an entity which is regarded as being the immortal or spiritual part of the person and, though having no physical or material reality, is credited with the functions of thinking and willing, and hence determining all behavior
  2. the moral or emotional nature of a human being
  3. spiritual or emotional warmth, force, etc., or evidence of this: a cold painting, without soul
  4. vital or essential part, quality, or principle: “brevity is the soul of wit”
  5. the person who leads or dominates; central figure: Daniel Boone, soul of the frontier
  6. embodiment; personification: the very soul of kindness
  7. a person: a town of 1,000 souls
  8. the spirit of a dead person, thought of as separate from the body and leading an existence of its own
    1. the deep spiritual and emotional quality of black American culture and heritage
    2. strong expression of this quality in a musical performance
    3. a form of rhythm and blues characterized by a more deliberate beat, emotionally intense vocals, and elements of U.S. gospel music

Origin: ME soule < OE sawol, akin to Ger seele, Goth saiwala < Gmc *saiwalo, lit., ? that belonging to the sea (< *saiwa- > sea): from the early Gmc belief that souls originate in and return to the sea

adjective

of, for, like, or characteristic of American blacks

See soul in American Heritage Dictionary 4

noun
  1. The animating and vital principle in humans, credited with the faculties of thought, action, and emotion and often conceived as an immaterial entity.
  2. The spiritual nature of humans, regarded as immortal, separable from the body at death, and susceptible to happiness or misery in a future state.
  3. The disembodied spirit of a dead human.
  4. A human: “the homes of some nine hundred souls” (Garrison Keillor).
  5. The central or integral part; the vital core: “It saddens me that this network … may lose its soul, which is after all the quest for news” (Marvin Kalb).
  6. A person considered as the perfect embodiment of an intangible quality; a personification: I am the very soul of discretion.
  7. A person's emotional or moral nature: “An actor is … often a soul which wishes to reveal itself to the world but dare not” (Alec Guinness).
  8. A sense of ethnic pride among Black people and especially African Americans, expressed in areas such as language, social customs, religion, and music.
  9. A strong, deeply felt emotion conveyed by a speaker, a performer, or an artist.
  10. Soul music.

Origin:

Origin: Middle English

Origin: , from Old English sāwol

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See soul in Ologies

Soul

See also ghosts; religion;spirits and spiritualism; theology.

creationism Theology.

a doctrine that God creates a new soul for every human being bon. Cf. metempsychosis. —creationist, n. —creationistic, adj.

infusionism

the doctrine or belief that the soul enters the body by divine infu-sion at conception or birth.

metempsychosis

1. the passage of a soul from one body to another.

2. the rebirth of the soul at death in another body, either human or animal. Cf. creationism. —metempsychic, metempsychosic, metempsychosical, adj.

monopsychism

the theory that all souls are actually a single unity. —mono-psychic, monopsychical, adj.

nullibism

the denial that the soul exists. —nullibist, n.

panpsychism

Philosophy. the doctrine that each object in the universe has either a mind or an unconscious soul. —panpsychist, n. —panpsychistic, adj.

polypsychism

the belief that one person may have many souls or modes of intelligence. —polypsychic, polypsychical, adj.

psychagogy

the guiding of a soul, especially that of a person recently dead into the lower world. —psychagogue, n. —psychagogic, adj.

psychomachy

Obsolete, a conflict or battle between the soul and the body.

psychorrhagy

the manifestation of a person’s soul to another, usually at some distance from the body. —psychorrhagic, adj.

theopsychism

the belief that the soul has a divine nature.

traducianism

Theology. the doctrine that a new human soul is generated from the souls of the parents at the moment of conception. —traducianist, n. —traducianistic, adj.

transmigrationism

any of various theories of metempsychosis or reincarna-tion, as the Hindu doctrines of Karma.

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