divine
Americanadjective
-
of or relating to a god, especially the Supreme Being.
-
addressed, appropriated, or devoted to God or a god; religious; sacred.
divine worship.
-
proceeding from God or a god.
divine laws;
divine guidance.
-
godlike; characteristic of or befitting a deity.
divine magnanimity.
-
the divine kingdom.
-
extremely good; unusually lovely.
He has the most divine tenor voice.
-
being a god; being God.
Zeus, Hera, and other divine beings in Greek mythology.
-
of superhuman or surpassing excellence.
Beauty is divine.
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Obsolete. of or relating to divinity or theology.
noun
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divines
plural
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a theologian; scholar in religion.
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a priest or member of the clergy.
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the Divine,
-
God.
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(sometimes lowercase) the spiritual aspect of humans; the group of attributes and qualities of humankind regarded as godly or godlike.
-
verb (used with object)
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divines,
present (3rd person singular)
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divined,
past participle, past
-
divining
present participle
-
to discover or declare (something obscure or in the future) by divination; prophesy.
-
to discover (water, metal, etc.) by means of a divining rod.
-
to perceive by intuition or insight; conjecture.
She divined personal details about her customers based on their clothing and accents.
It was not difficult to divine his true intent.
- Synonyms:
- understand, discern
-
Archaic. to portend.
verb (used without object)
-
divines,
present (3rd person singular)
-
divined,
past participle, past
-
divining
present participle
-
to use or practice divination; prophesy.
-
to have perception by intuition or insight; conjecture.
- Synonyms:
- understand, discern
adjective
-
of, relating to, or characterizing God or a deity
-
godlike
-
of, relating to, or associated with religion or worship
the divine liturgy
-
of supreme excellence or worth
-
informal splendid; perfect
noun
-
(often capital) another term for God
-
a priest, esp one learned in theology
verb
-
to perceive or understand (something) by intuition or insight
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to conjecture (something); guess
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to discern (a hidden or future reality) as though by supernatural power
-
(tr) to search for (underground supplies of water, metal, etc) using a divining rod
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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divinenessnoun
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divinernoun
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subdivinenessnoun
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divinableadjective
-
half-divineadjective
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predivinableadjective
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pseudodivineadjective
-
subdivineadjective
-
superdivineadjective
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undivinableadjective
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undivinedadjective
-
undiviningadjective
-
divinelyadverb
-
half-divinelyadverb
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subdivinelyadverb
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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divinesimple
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divinessimple
-
have divinedperfect
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has divinedperfect
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am diviningprogressive
-
are diviningprogressive
-
is diviningprogressive
-
have been diviningperfect progressive
-
has been diviningperfect progressive
Past
-
divinedsimple
-
had divinedperfect
-
was diviningprogressive
-
were diviningprogressive
-
had been diviningperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of divine
First recorded in 1300–50; Middle English divin(e), devin(e), from Old French devin(e), Latin dīvīnus, equivalent to dīv(us) “god” + -īnus -ine 1
Explanation
"To err is human, to forgive divine" means that everyone makes mistakes, but we should try to be like god and forgive one another. Divine basically means relating to, coming from, or like God or a god. Divine also has an old-fashioned and informal meaning of being very good or pleasing, as in "She looked absolutely divine in her blue and white gown." This is an adjective that goes back to Middle English, borrowed from Old French devine, from Latin dīvīnus "divine, foreseeing," from dīvus "god."
Vocabulary lists containing divine
"The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe
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"The Raven"
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World Religions
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Its definition of "allurement" includes employment, free education at a religious institution, a promise of marriage, a "better lifestyle" and "divine healing".
From BBC ● Sep. 29, 2026
Deep dish pizza for all, but a World Series in Chicago this fall might truly require divine intervention.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 28, 2026
They regarded it as reflecting a perfect divine system.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 20, 2026
Even with the divine Oscar, you can have too much of a good thing.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 11, 2026
He came forth, and going to Pentheus again he tried to persuade him to yield to what these wonders plainly showed was divine, and welcome this new worship of a new and great god.
From "Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes" by Edith Hamilton
Brook was one of those rare divines, to borrow Portia’s metaphor from “The Merchant of Venice,” who followed his own instructions.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 3, 2022
And Ms. Kim is equally good as Allison, who intuits that something’s gone slightly askew in her friendship with Lauren, but little divines how dire the situation really is.
From New York Times ● Aug. 4, 2016
Puritan divines made explicit links between the washing of the physical body in water and that of the spirit in baptism.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 5, 2016
If there was ever a time we can start to turn this thing around it’s now Back at Waikeria, Neil Campbell divines a pivotal moment.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 14, 2015
The two divines wore tunics “the color of the men of light,” as Marcos called the color yellow.
From "The House of the Spirits: A Novel" by Isabel Allende
In this week’s Amicus Plus segment, Slate’s judicial diviner Mark Joseph Stern joins to talk about a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling on abortion that really took both text and history and human rights seriously.
From Slate ● Feb. 3, 2024
There is also Augure, a diviner who can sense the future, and from the start the omens look forbidding for the newlyweds.
From New York Times ● Nov. 11, 2021
Lacking recourse to the United Nations, the Moabites turned to a diviner named Balaam to curse the Israelis.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 30, 2020
TULSA, Okla. — The landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh is a diviner of places, a city whisperer.
From New York Times ● Aug. 10, 2018
I looked over my shoulder to see the diviner holding up a hand in farewell as she, the Ridgefolk, and the mountain they lived inside dwindled in the distance.
From "Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky" by Kwame Mbalia
This belief was revived during the Renaissance, leading Milton to exclaim, in his poem “Il Penseroso”: “Hail divinest Melancholy/Whose saintly visage is too bright/To hit the sense of human sight.”
From New York Times ● Feb. 26, 2010
I should have said "divinest of all creatures."
From A Proposal Under Difficulties A Farce by John Kendrick Bangs
The Elegy is the expression in divinest poetry of the best conceptions of a noble soul upon the most serious topic on which human thought can dwell.
From A Literary Pilgrimage Among the Haunts of Famous British Authors by Theodore F. (Theodore Frelinghuysen) Wolfe
The two divinest things this world has got,
From Life of John Keats His Life and Poetry, his Friends, Critics and After-fame by Sidney Colvin
But she let her soul go down now to the divinest humiliation.
From In Wild Rose Time by Amanda M. Douglas
Yet Oldham divined a prohibition from the penumbras of an 1872 statute.
From Slate ● Jul. 10, 2025
The challenge for those affected is that the precise position of US foreign policy is having to be divined.
From BBC ● Feb. 15, 2025
The status of their romance was divined through the way the nut burned.
From Salon ● Oct. 30, 2023
For example, Roman priests divined the will of the gods by examining a sacrificed animal’s entrails, a custom adopted from the Etruscans.
From Textbooks ● Apr. 19, 2023
Mr. Sharpe, we divined, represented a consortium of investors.
From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party" by M.T. Anderson
In a Substack post on Wednesday, Basmajian identifies the most reliable sectors with predictive value for divining future economic activity.
From MarketWatch ● Feb. 18, 2026
This laudable notion of divining true skill should be extended to teachers to mitigate the oh-so-tempting use of AI in lesson plans, discussions, projects and tests.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 17, 2025
Goth Shakira is an Aquarian Queen of Pentacles divining and loving in Los Angeles.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 19, 2025
They are similar to divining rods some claim can be used to find water, and that UK water companies have used in the past to search for underground pipes.
From BBC ● Oct. 29, 2024
I wondered if her divining abilities allowed her to see the other coin in my pocket.
From "Moon Over Manifest" by Clare Vanderpool
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
