lost soul

lost soul

1. A sinner, especially one who has been condemned to hell (as opposed to being granted eternal life in heaven). I worry that my granddaughter is a lost soul, since she's stopped going to church.
2. One who is sad, lonely, and/or aimless. Ever since his wife died, my brother just drifts through the town like a lost soul.
See also: lost, soul
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

a lost soul

1 a soul that is damned. 2 a person who seems unable to cope with everyday life.
See also: lost, soul
Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary
See also:
  • a lost soul
  • be hell on wheels
  • hell and high water
  • be hell on
  • be hell on (one)
  • what in hell
  • a hell of a
  • hell of a
  • hell of a (person or thing)
  • hell of a someone/something
References in classic literature
I've been working like a machine, and feeling like a lost soul. There was nothing interesting."
These sickening scoundrels had merely intended to keep me back, to fool me with their display of confidence, and presently to fall upon me with a fate more horrible than death,--with torture; and after torture the most hideous degradation it is possible to conceive,--to send me off a lost soul, a beast, to the rest of their Comus rout.
The voice seemed partly human, yet so hideous that it might well have emanated from the tortured throat of a lost soul, writhing in the fires of hell.
All at once, above Phoebus's head she beheld another head; a green, livid, convulsed face, with the look of a lost soul; near this face was a hand grasping a poniard.--It was the face and hand of the priest; he had broken the door and he was there.
But, upon my lost soul, I won't be bad towards you again, Tess.
Rogojin asked his question like a lost soul appealing to some divinity, with the reckless daring of one appointed to die, who has nothing to lose.
It might have been a lost soul wailing, had it not been invested with a certain sad fierceness and hungry eagerness.
From away somewhere in the outer darkness floated in through the open door a faint, far cry--a long, sobbing wail, as of a child death- strangled in the desert, or a lost soul borne away by the Adversary.
Now, I'm a lost soul, pursued by devils that torment me day and night; they keep pushing me on and on--and I'll do it, too, some of these days!" she said, clenching her hand, while an insane light glanced in her heavy black eyes.
With all Avdotya Romanovna's natural aversion and in spite of my invariably gloomy and repellent aspect--she did at least feel pity for me, pity for a lost soul. And if once a girl's heart is moved to /pity/, it's more dangerous than anything.
"Weeping like a woman or a lost soul," said the butler.
'Well, I won't repeat my offer of a wife: it is as bad as offering Satan a lost soul. Your bliss lies, like his, in inflicting misery.
She is a lost soul! - That is why I call Lord Illingworth a bad man.
At the upper end we came out into a small chamber, the walls of which were plank except for a single window overlooking the slopes of Otz and the Valley of Lost Souls beyond.
Presently there emerged from the mountain a canoe laden with lost souls from the outer world.