soul
/səʊl/noun, adjective, verb
soul is spelled S-O-U-L. The wrong spelling people search most is sould: about 120 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 71 of all searches for the word. Soul is a noun meaning “The spirit or essence of a person usually thought to consist of one's thoughts and personality, often…”. The plural of soul is souls.
How many letters and syllables are in soul?
| Letters | 4: S-O-U-L |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 65 times per million words; the 1,636th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, sould, about 120 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
| Pairs people search | |
| Sounds like | |
| Rhymes with |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How do you spell soul?
Soul is spelled S-O-U-L. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 71 of the searches for soul in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is soul?
Soul appears 65 times per million words in written English, the 1,636th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce soul?
- UK /səʊl/
- UK [sɔʊɫ]
- UK [sɒʊɫ]
Soul has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-soul.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with soul
Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).
Sounds like: Seoul, sole (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).
Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
What rhymes with soul?
The 12 most written words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as soul from its last stressed vowel (/əʊl/, British pronunciation):
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of soul
- souls plural, present, singular, he/she/it
- souling participle, present
- souled participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does soul mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
The spirit or essence of a person usually thought to consist of one's thoughts and personality, often believed to live on after the person's death.
- 2
The spirit or essence of anything.
- 3
Life, energy, vigor.
- 4
Cultural consciousness and pride among people of African American heritage.
- 5
A strong positive feeling of intense sensitivity and emotional fervor conveyed especially by African American performers.
- 6
Soul music.
- 7
A person, especially as one among many.
18 January 1915, D. H. Lawrence, letter to William Hopkin I want to gather together about twenty souls and sail away from this world of war and squalor and found a little colony where there shall be no money but a sort of communism as far a
- 8
An individual life.
Fifty souls were lost when the ship sank.
adjective
- 1
Characteristic of or pertaining to African American culture.
soul music
verb
- 1
obsoleteTo endow with a soul or mind.
- 2
To beg on All Soul's Day.
- 3
obsoleteTo feed or nourish.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Soul in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | âme , soul |
| German | Seele , Soul , Geist |
| Portuguese | alma , soul , ânimo |
| Spanish | alma, pneuma |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does soul come from?
From Middle English soule, sowle, saule, sawle, from Old English sāwol (“soul, life, spirit, being”), from Proto-West Germanic *saiwalu, from Proto-Germanic *saiwalō (“soul”), of an uncertain ultimate origin (see there for further information).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).