Souls

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /səʊlz/

Definitions

1. Invisible spiritual entities believed to live beyond the physical body ; the essential, innermost nature or character of a living person or thing ; a group or number of human beings considered collectively
2. Non-physical beings commonly regarded as the eternal part of a human ; the fundamental quality or spirit defining someone or something ; a collection or total count of people
3. The incorporeal spirits thought to survive death ; the vital force or true self within an individual or object ; the aggregate of people gathered or regarded as a whole

Etymology: The plural "souls" is simply the plural of "soul", so the story is that of the singular. English "soul" comes from Old English "sāwol", meaning "soul, life, spirit, being", which traces back through Proto-West Germanic "saiwalu" to Proto-Germanic "saiwalō". Its ultimate origin is uncertain, though the Gothic "saiwala" shows the same word was already in use among the early Germanic peoples. The English word has relatives across the Germanic languages: German "Seele", Dutch "ziel", West Frisian "siel", and Swedish "själ" all descend from the same ancestral term. The Old English form gradually softened into the Middle English "soule" and "sowle", and the modern spelling settled in later centuries.

Synonyms: spirits, entities, beings, essences, lives

Antonyms: bodies, mortals, corpses, nonexistence, void