What's the difference between
and
Enter two words to compare and contrast their definitions, origins, and synonyms to better understand how those words are related.

Prey vs Soyle - What's the difference?

prey | soyle |

As nouns the difference between prey and soyle

is that prey is (archaic) anything, as goods, etc, taken or got by violence; anything taken by force from an enemy in war; spoil; booty; plunder while soyle is or soyle can be (obsolete) prey.

prey

English

Noun

  • (archaic) Anything, as goods, etc., taken or got by violence; anything taken by force from an enemy in war; spoil; booty; plunder.
  • * Bible, Numbers xxxi. 12
    • And they brought the captives, and the prey , and the spoil, unto Moses, and Eleazar the priest.
  • That which is or may be seized by animals or birds to be devoured; hence, a person given up as a victim.
  • * Dryden
    • Already sees herself the monster's prey .
  • * Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
    • [The helmsman] steered with no end of a swagger while you were by; but if he lost sight of you, he became instantly the prey of an abject funk
  • A living thing that is eaten by another living thing.
  • * Bible, Job iv. ii
    • The old lion perisheth for lack of prey .
  • * {{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=May-June, author= William E. Conner
    • , title= An Acoustic Arms Race , volume=101, issue=3, page=206-7, magazine=(American Scientist) , passage=Nonetheless, some insect prey take advantage of clutter by hiding in it. Earless ghost swift moths become “invisible” to echolocating bats by forming mating clusters close (less than half a meter) above vegetation and effectively blending into the clutter of echoes that the bat receives from the leaves and stems around them.}}
  • The act of devouring other creatures; ravage.
  • * Shakespeare
    • Hog in sloth, fox in stealth, lion in prey .
  • The victim of a disease.

    • Related terms

    * prey on

    References

    *

    Anagrams

    *

    soyle

    English

    Etymology 1

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • *{{quote-book, year=1598, author=Richard Hakluyt, title=The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I., chapter=, edition= citation
    • , passage=And in your planting the consideration of the clymate and of the soyle be matters that are to be respected. }}
  • *{{quote-book, year=1589, author=George Puttenham, title=The Arte of English Poesie, chapter=, edition= citation
    • , passage=As the good seedes sowen in fruitfull soyle , Bring foorth foyson when barren doeth them spoile: So doeth it fare when much good learning hits, Vpon shrewde willes and ill disposed wits. }}
  • *{{quote-book, year=1590, author=, title=Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I, chapter=, edition=1921 ed. citation
    • , passage=II Now are we come unto my native soyle , 10 And to the place where all our perils dwell; Here haunts that feend, and does his dayly spoyle; Therefore henceforth be at your keeping well,[*] And ever ready for your foeman fell. }}
  • *{{quote-book, year=1638, author=John Wilkins, title=The Discovery of a World in the Moone, chapter=, edition= citation
    • , passage=Keplar'' thinkes that our earth receives that light whereby it shines from the Sunne, but this (saith he) is not such an intended cleare brightnesse as the Moone is capable of, and therefore hee guesses, that the earth there is of a more chokie soyle like the Ile of ''Creete , and so is better able to reflect a stronger light, whereas our earth must supply this intention with the quantity of its body, but this I conceive to be a needlesse conjecture, since our earth if all things were well considered, will be found able enough to reflect as great a light. }}

    Etymology 2

    Compare (soil) to feed.

    Noun

  • (obsolete) prey
    • (Spenser)
    (Webster 1913)