soul

soul 1 *mind, intellect, psyche, brain, intelligence, wit

Analogous words: powers, faculties, functions (see singular nouns at POWER)

2 Soul, spirit can both denote an immaterial entity that is held to be distinguishable from and felt as superior to the body with which it is associated during the life of the individual and that in most religious beliefs is regarded as immortal, surviving the death of the body.

Soul (see also MIND 2) may be preferred when the emphasis is upon the thing considered as an entity having specific functions, responsibilities, aspects, or destiny, while spirit (see also COURAGE, APPARITION) may be preferred when the stress is upon the quality, the constitution, the movement, or the activity of that entity

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hoped to save his soul

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willing to sell his soul

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pray for the souls of the dead

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do the right thing for your soul's sake

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come close to God in spirit

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a man fervent in spirit

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the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak—Mr 26:41

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Soul, both in the sense here emphasized and in the extended meanings derived from that sense, usually suggests a relation to or a connection with a body or with a physical or material entity to which it gives life or power; spirit in both its restricted and extended senses suggests an opposition or even an antithesis to what is physical, corporeal, or material and often a repugnance to the latter

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it often takes a war to lay bare the soul of a people

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obey the spirit rather than the letter of a law

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Gibbon's magnificent saying, that the Greek language gave a soul to the objects of sense and a body to the abstractions of metaphysics— Quiller-Couch

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{those who believe in the reality of a world of the spirit—the poet, the artist, the mystic—are at one in believing that there are other domains than that of physics— Jeans) Spirit only, and not soul, is used of incorporeal beings (as angels or devils)

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I can call spirits from the vasty deep— Shak.

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Antonyms: body