English

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Alternative forms

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Noun

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soul-search (countable and uncountable, plural soul-searches)

  1. (countable) An act or instance of soul-searching.
    • 2004, Linda Elaine Thomas, Living Stones in the Household of God, page 158:
      Thus she willingly journeys with me in my soul-search.
    • 2011, Gail Duff, The Wheel Of The Wiccan Year, page 200:
      Do not do a large soul-search if it is the first time that you have attempted something like this, but find one or two simple things that will be easy to put right once identified.
    • 2014, Sirpy, Smashed!::
      After several years of reading Shiv Khera books and millions of minutes spent in meditative soul-searches, he had eventually found something that he believed he was good at and was able to execute without any trouble.
  2. (uncountable) The process of deep and critical self-examination.
    • 1968, Curriculum Imperative: Survival of Self in Society:
      Moreover, just as the adherents of the new protest ideologies have been involved in a soul-search of their own identities and thus involved in struggles to make and to declare choices, so likewise the national society is engaged in soul-search and choice.
    • 1998, United Nations Population Fund, A Guidance Resource Manual on the Growing Filipino Adolescent:
      On my cheek I can still feel the child's kiss—a kiss that has triggered some soul-search inside me.
    • 2018, Xiaoli Yang, A Dialogue between Haizi’s Poetry and the Gospel of Luke, page 6:
      This chapter defines the scope of the book by limiting it to the dialogue between the soul-search of Haizi and his generation through Haizi's poetry, and Jesus Christ predominantly in the Gospel of Luke.

Verb

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soul-search (third-person singular simple present soul-searches, present participle soul-searching, simple past and past participle soul-searched)

  1. To engage in deep and critical self-examination.
    • 2006, Peter Stokes, How's Everything?:
      These are the times when you should take a deep breath and deeply soul-search your own actions to see whether you could have done anything at all that would have increased your tip.
    • 2011, Brian Luke Seaward, Managing Stress: A Creative Journal, page xi:
      Sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and experts in a great many fields are noting that what we are losing in the information age is the ability to soul-search.
    • 2013, Sherika Moore, Just Listen, page 52:
      The quiet times I steal back from you for myself has given me time to soul-search.

Anagrams

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