From the Word Fugitives archive...
"Soul" mates
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E. James Lieberman, of Washington, D.C., writes: "There used to be three adjectives from 'soul' -- now obsolete. German has 'seelisch' but we have to go to 'spiritual' which is not the same. Why did we lose 'soular' and 'soulic,' and how can we get them back? As the translator of some writings of Otto Rank in German, I indulged with 'soular' once, and more often used 'soul' as an adjectival noun."
James, "soulful," I gather, is not like what you have in mind?
Wouldn't 'soul' be a good example of the kind of word where, in translation, you need a combination to create the respective translated image? For example, She was a great-souled character. I don't know that I would ever say such a phrase, but reading it would give me the necessary image. Am I off the beaten track here?
Soulful is a good word, but not an adjective describing something essential to soul itself. It means "having soul." I'm looking for the equivalent of soul-like.
My problem was getting an adjective in English to translate the German adjective "seelisch." I can use "soul-crisis" or "soul-question" to get around the fact that we don't have an adjective other than "spiritual"--too religious-sounding for my purposes. And I still wonder why "soular" and "soulic" disappeared from our vocabulary.
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