: an intoxicating juice from a plant of disputed identity that was used in ancient India as an offering to the gods and as a drink of immortality by worshippers in Vedic ritual and worshipped in personified form as a Vedic god

soma

2 of 2

noun (2)

1
: the body of an organism
2
: all of an organism except the germ cells
3

Examples of soma in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web
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Noun
Only a cynic would say elevated inflation is guaranteed for years ahead – at least until the day robots are ironing your shirts and showering you with soma and free goods. — Clem Chambers, Forbes.com, 28 Apr. 2026 So, now to come back to this analogy, in us our soma are different from our germline, right? — Steven Strogatz, Quanta Magazine, 12 June 2025 This is a technocratic view of art’s purpose, one that reduces art to a type of soma for late capitalism’s weary workers, Apple’s dream employees on an eighteen-hour shift and counting. — Michaëla De Lacaze Mohrmann, Artforum, 1 Jan. 2025 Somatics refers to practices that center the body, also known as the ‘soma’. — Evie Muir, refinery29.com, 5 Sep. 2024 One that understands that, indeed, our psyches and somas are intertwined. — Hannah Zeavin, The New Yorker, 14 Sep. 2023 The lower classes do all the menial jobs, and are issued a dose of soma at the end of each workday. — Blaine Cooper, Star Tribune, 10 Apr. 2021 This work presents a planner that can automatically find an optimal assembly sequence for a dual-arm robot to assemble the soma blocks. — IEEE Spectrum, 6 Mar. 2020

Word History

Etymology

Noun (1)

Sanskrit; akin to Avestan haoma, a Zoroastrian ritual drink, Sanskrit sunoti he presses out

Noun (2)

New Latin somat-, soma, from Greek sōmat-, sōma body

First Known Use

Noun (1)

1827, in the meaning defined above

Noun (2)

circa 1885, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Time Traveler
The first known use of soma was in 1827

Browse Nearby Words

Cite this Entry

“Soma.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/soma. Accessed 24 Sep. 2026.

Medical Definition

soma

1 of 2 noun
1
: the body of an organism
2
: all of an organism except the germ cells
3

Soma

2 of 2 trademark
—used for a preparation of carisoprodol

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