soft

Meaning

1. Easily giving way under pressure.
2. Smooth and flexible; not rough, rugged, or harsh.
3. Quiet.
4. Gentle.
5. Expressing gentleness or tenderness; mild; conciliatory; courteous; kind.
6. Gentle in action or motion; easy.
7. Weak in character; impressible.
8. Requiring little or no effort; easy.
9. Not bright or intense.
10. Having a slight angle from straight.
11. Voiced; sonant; lenis.
12. Voiceless.
13. Palatalized.
14. (slang) Lacking strength or resolve; not tough, wimpy.
15. Low in dissolved calcium compounds.
16. (colloquial) Foolish.
17. Of a ferromagnetic material; a material that becomes essentially non-magnetic when an external magnetic field is removed, a material with a low magnetic coercivity. (compare hard)
18. Physically or emotionally weak.
19. Effeminate.
20. Agreeable to the senses.
21. Not harsh or offensive to the sight; not glaring or jagged; pleasing to the eye.
22. Made up of nonparallel rays, tending to wrap around a subject and produce diffuse shadows.
23. Incomplete, or temporary; not a full action.
24. Emulated with software; not physically real.
25. Not likely to cause addiction.
26. Not containing alcohol.
27. Easy-going, lenient, not strict; permissive.
28. Of a market: having more supply than demand; being a buyer's market.
29. Softcore.
30. Of paper: unsized.
31. Of silk: having the natural gum cleaned or washed off.
32. Of coal: bituminous, as opposed to anthracitic.
33. Of weather: warm enough to melt ice; thawing.

tender

gentle

not hard

become soft

be tender

very soft

easily hurt

full-flavoured

gentle wind

lose heart

spruce gum

squidgy

weak-willed

adj i & 3 damp

be exquisite

warm and fluffy

be easy

cushioney

pleasing to the ear

be fragile

light complexion

not firm

not loud

not compact

designating a kind of gold

make soft

featherlike

low-toned

lusterless

off-and-on

non-spirituous

soft-skinned

soft tone

shaky be

spongy ground

uncrisp

Frequency

Pronounced as (IPA)

/sɒft/

From Middle English softe, from Old English sōfte, alteration of earlier sēfte (“soft”), from Proto-West Germanic *samft(ī) (“level, even, smooth, soft, gentle”) (compare *sōmiz (“agreeable, fitting”)), from Proto-Indo-European *semptio-, *semtio-, from *sem- (“one, whole”). Cognate with West Frisian sêft (“gentle; soft”), Dutch zacht (“soft”), German Low German sacht (“soft”), German sanft (“soft, yielding”), Old Norse sœmr (“agreeable, fitting”), samr (“same”). More at seem, same.