Definition of "soul" []

• The animating and vital principle in humans, credited with the faculties of thought, action, and emotion and often conceived as an immaterial entity. (noun)
• The spiritual nature of humans, regarded as immortal, separable from the body at death, and susceptible to happiness or misery in a future state. (noun)
• The disembodied spirit of a dead human. (noun)
• A human: "the homes of some nine hundred souls” ( Garrison Keillor). (noun)
• 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). (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.

• ""I can respect a _soul_, sir," replied Emma, warmly, -- "a soul made in the image of God, though it were sunk in the very depths of pollution and wretchedness; and so can the 'Great and Holy One,' Mr. Sliver, or he never would have sent his Son to redeem the world.""
• "It is of the highest importance to the developing soul to unfold into a realization of this relationship and unity, _for when this conception is once fully established the soul is enabled to rise above certain of the lower planes, and is free from the operation of certain laws that bind the undeveloped soul_."
• "For it is the soul which manifests as _body_, which thinks as _mind_, which feels and loves as _heart_, and which is what it is -- though not perhaps what it really or finally is -- as _soul_."