What is the precise meaning of "soul"? [closed]

I was translating a sentence which contained the Arabic word "نفس (nefs)" in an answer to a question. نفس is physical entity of a living thing, that feels and experiences earthly desires and emotions like sleeping, hunger, frightening, and lust. It is the basic animal instincts and desires of a living being. I translated نفس as "physical body", but someone opposed it and said that the word "soul" was more fitting for it.

However, I thought that there was a different word for "soul" in Arabic, which is "روح (rooh)". روح is consciousness, power to decide, ability to think and decide. It is the intelligence of a living being.

So, which meaning is more fitting to "soul"? Nefs or rooh?
What does "soul" actually mean in English? How do you define it?

The way soul is used in English is usually a bit closer to روح (or the related Hebrew ruach, רוח ). The term نفس (or Hebrew nefesh, נפש) we might call life-force or something similar. However, both are often translated as "soul", with the understating that each term is one part of a multipartite model of the soul which also encompasses the nasama, نَسَمَة (or Hebrew neshamah, נשמה).

Generally, English speakers conceive of the soul as the seat of consciousness, the self that they experience as themselves. For people who would go around talking about this sort of thing, that's going to be a more intellectual, linguistic mode of being, but there are almost always overtones of strong emotional drives and higher purpose as well.

I think the most accurate thing to say is that English speakers conceive of soul as meaning the totality of نفس , روح , and نَسَمَة (nefs, rooh, and nasama; nefesh, ruach, and neshamah; emotion, thought, and higher being).

Also important to note, though, is that the term "soul" has no precise meaning in the general usage, signifying very different things to different speakers and in different contexts, and only attains precision in specialist religious or esoteric usages that vary wildly from the general usage and from each other.

روح seems to express something less tangible than نفس. The former is, after all, derived from a root verb which has the meanings ‘breathe’ and ‘smell’ among its various forms.

I’ve always thought of نفس as meaning ‘self’, but the English edition of Hans Wehr’s ‘A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic’ gives ‘soul’ as its first meaning. So maybe روح = spirit and نفس = soul. We perhaps need a theologian to tell us the difference. (It’s no good asking me: I have neither.)