Quote:
Originally Posted by Salty
2. "...the ship foundered with 120 souls aboard, and all were lost..."
The source of the first quote should be recognizeable; the second quote is from late 19th century usage. I would submit, that before blues music, a soul was considered an entire human being, not part of a person.
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I don't see why that follows. It is common to use some part of the body, even a non-existent one, as a metaphor for the entire body. Examples that comes to mind are "many mouths to feed" and "a head count". Even today it's OK to use "souls" metaphorically to mean people.