Definition of "pneuma" [pneuma]

• The soul or vital spirit. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "For only when the psychical pneuma is serene, lucid, and clear does it cross over to the posterior ventricle (Publicius, Art of Memory, 28)."
• "When we apply ourselves to seeking something with memory, this pineal gland is opened to provide access to the animate spirit psychical pneuma from the anterior to the posterior ventricle."
• "Further, as Barfield rightly noted, the literal/figurative distinction is actually a breaking apart of what at least sometimes is an earlier holophrastic meaning -- that is, we have no reason to think that people took pneuma (=wind) as the anchor meaning and then extended the use to pneuma (=spirit); rather, they just used the word pneuma in both ways without bothering about literal and figurative senses."