Search the Dictionary

Of or pertaining to the moral feelings or states of the soul, as distinguished from the external actions; reaching and affecting the spirits. God's law is spiritual; it is a transcript of the divine nature, and extends its authority to the acts of the soul of man. Sir T. Browne.

The doctrine, in opposition to the materialists, that all which exists is spirit, or soul -- that what is called the external world is either a succession of notions impressed on the mind by the Deity, as maintained by Berkeley, or else the mere educt of the mind itself, as taught by Fichte.

r state of being spiritual; incorporeality; heavenly- mindedness. A pleasure made for the soul, suitable to its spirituality. South. If this light be not spiritual, yet it approacheth nearest to spirituality. Sir W. Raleigh. Much of our spirituality and comfort in public worship depends on the state of mind in which we…

influence of the world; to give a spiritual character or tendency to; as, to spiritualize soul. This seen in the clear air, and the whole spiritualized by endless recollections, fills the eye and the heart more forcibly than I can find words to say. Carlyle.

Spirit; mind; soul; state of mind; mood. [Obs.] "The high heroic spright." Spenser. Wondrous great grief groweth in my spright. Spenser.

gayety; vivacity. In dreams, observe with what a sprightliness and alacrity does she [the soul] exert herself! Addison.

A spirit; a soul; a shade; also, an apparition. See Spright. Gaping graves received the wandering, guilty sprite. Dryden.

Not active or brisk; dull; as, business in stagnant. That gloomy slumber of the stagnant soul. Johnson. For him a stagnant life was not worth living. Palfrey.

The Stahlian theoru, that every vital action is function or operation of the soul.

ut of his sleep to start. Chaucer. I start as from some dreadful dream. Dryden. Keep your soul to the work when ready to start aside. I. Watts. But if he start, It is the flesh of a corrupted heart. Shak.

To move suddenly, or be excited, on feeling alarm; to start. Why shrinks the soul Back on herself, and startles at destruction Addison.

rose my stiffening hair. Dryden. The tender soil then stiffening by degrees. Dryden. Some souls we see, Grow hard and stiffen with adversity. Dryden.

aw or pull out to greater length; to strain; as, to stretch a tendon or muscle. Awake, my soul, stretch every nerve. Doddridge.

thout the possibility or the fact of an attendant consciousness; -- said of states of the soul.

such a lowness, but his unkind daughters. Shak. If aught . . . were worthy to subdue The soul of man. Milton.

To raise on high. [Archaic] A soul sublimed by an idea above the region of vanity and conceit. E. P. Whipple.

The quality or state of being substantial; corporiety; materiality. The soul is a stranger to such gross substantiality. Glanvill.

a town." Chaucer. [London] could hardly have contained less than thirty or forty thousand souls within its walls; and the suburbs were very populous. Hallam.

, or injury incurred; as, sufferings by pain or sorrow; sufferings by want or by wrongs. "Souls in sufferings tried." Keble.

the faithful departed. Shipley. I firmly believe that there is a purgatory, and that the souls therein detained are helped by the suffrages of the faithful. Creed of Pope Pius IV.