Other forms: soils, soiled, soiling
Soil is the dark ground material that plants grow in. Broken rock, rotted plants, water and a great deal of life.
Gardeners care about its type, since clay, sandy and loam soils behave quite differently, and topsoil is the fertile layer at the top. The word is slightly more technical than earth and much more so than dirt. It has a patriotic use, since native soil means the country you were born in. There is also a verb meaning to make dirty, which survives mainly in soiled linen and in polite medical language.
1nounsoilThe top layer of ground in which plants grow.
“The soil here is heavy clay.”
2verbdirtyTo make something dirty.
“He would not soil his hands with it.”
Also accepted in games: earth, dirt
Soil is a mix-up that stuck. Anglo-Norman soyl came from Latin solium, a seat or a throne, which somebody confused with solum, the ground or the sole of the foot.
Latin
solium — seat, chair; throne
Anglo-Norman
soyl — bottom, ground, pavement
Middle English
soile
English, today
soil
Built from
From Middle English soile, soyle, sule (“ground, earth”), partly from Anglo-Norman soyl (“bottom, ground, pavement”), from Latin solium (“seat, chair; throne”), mistaken for Latin solum (“ground, foundation, earth, sole of the foot”); and partly from Old English sol (“mud, mire, wet sand”), from Proto-Germanic sulą (“mud, spot”), from Proto-Indo-European sūl- (“thick liquid”). Cognate with Middle Low German söle (“dirt, mud”), Middle Dutch sol (“dirt, filth”), Middle High German sol, söl (“dirt, mud, mire”), Danish søle (“mud, muck”). Compare French seuil (“level; threshold”) and sol (“soil, earth; ground”). See also sole, soal, solum. For the sole and soil relation, compare typologically по́чва akin to подо́шва.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA