soul-search

English

Alternative forms

soulsearch, soul search

Noun

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

(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.
(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

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

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

housecarls