Soulful means full of deep feeling. A soulful voice, soulful eyes, soulful playing.
It is used most of music and of eyes, and in music it points at a particular tradition — soul singing — as well as at feeling generally. Soulful eyes are large and sad and the phrase is used of dogs about as often as of people. Note soul; and that the word claims depth of feeling rather than skill.
1adjectivesoulfulFull of deep feeling.
“She sang a slow, soulful song that left half the audience in tears.”
synonyms: heartfelt, expressive
soulful is a quality of feeling.
Soul plus -ful, from Old English sawol. The musical sense of soul is a twentieth-century American development.
Proto-Germanic
*saiwalō — soul
Proto-West Germanic
*saiwalu
Old English
sāwol — soul, life, spirit, being
Middle English
soule
English
soul
English, today
soulful
From soul + -ful. soul comes from Middle English soule, sowle, saule, sawle, from Old English sāwol (“soul, life, spirit, being”), from Proto-West Germanic saiwalu, from Proto-Germanic saiwalō (“soul”), of an uncertain ultimate origin (see there for further information). 2 Cognate with Scots saul, sowel (“soul”), stq Seele (“soul”), West Frisian siel (“soul”), gsw Seel (“soul”), gmw-cfr Siel (“soul”), Dutch ziel (“soul”), German Seele (“soul”), German Low German Seel (“soul”), lb Séil (“soul, spirit”), wym zejł, zəjł, zyił (“soul”), Gothic 𐍃𐌰𐌹𐍅𐌰𐌻𐌰 (“soul”). Scandinavian homonyms seem to have been borrowed from Old Saxon sēola. Modern Danish sjæl (“soul”), Icelandic sál (“soul”), Norwegian Bokmål sjel (“soul”), Norwegian Nynorsk sjel, sål (“soul”), Swedish själ (“soul”), Finnish sielu (“soul”) may have come from Old English sāwol.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA