soul case

The notion of the body as a mere case for the soul goes back to the 1600s in British English, but in the early 1900s to worry the soul case out of someone was an expression in Australian English, borrowed from southern American English but common enough here.  You could worry or wear or belt or sweat the soul case out of others — there were many variants.  Nowadays it sounds quaint and is, I suspect, almost obsolete, although there are citations right up to 2003: We knocked the living soulcase out of each other but became firm friends afterwards.  [Herald Sun Melbourne] Perhaps it is the idea of the soul case that brings people up short these days.

Since the OED said that this phrase was an Americanism, I consulted Mathews Dictionary of Americanisms.  I did not find soul case but I did find a few other amusing things. Soul butter was ‘a contemptuous term for moralising drivel’ with the citation from Mark Twain.  A soul shark was a preacher.  And a soul sleeper was a member of a sect that believed that the soul was a physical part of the body that lay dormant through life and woke with the resurrection.