English

Noun

soyle ‎(plural soyles)

1. Obsolete spelling of soil
   • 1598, Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I.:

     And in your planting the consideration of the clymate and of the soyle be matters that are to be respected.

   • 1589, George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie:

     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.

   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I, 1921 ed. edition:

     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.

   • 1638, John Wilkins, The Discovery of a World in the Moone:

     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

soyle

1. (obsolete) prey

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Spenser to this entry?)