Soul
Theological basis, poetic metaphor, or quantum reality?
How We Say It
sohl
Where It Comes From
Old English sฤwol โ spiritual and emotional part of a person. Proto-Germanic. Among the oldest abstract concepts in the language โ evidence of the word predates written English. The soul was the animating principle, the thing that made the body live.
How It's Been Used
Soul has resisted complete secularization โ unlike many religious words, it survives in everyday speech as something beyond metaphor: 'I put my soul into it,' 'the soul of the nation.' In political speech, 'the soul of America' invokes something precious and at risk โ a rhetorical move that borrows theological weight.