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.
-
Obsolete. of or relating to divinity or theology.
noun
-
divines
plural
-
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
-
to conjecture (something); guess
-
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
-
divinernoun
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subdivinenessnoun
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divinableadjective
-
half-divineadjective
-
predivinableadjective
-
pseudodivineadjective
-
subdivineadjective
-
superdivineadjective
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undivinableadjective
-
undivinedadjective
-
undiviningadjective
-
divinelyadverb
-
half-divinelyadverb
-
subdivinelyadverb
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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divinesimple
-
divinessimple
-
have divinedperfect
-
has divinedperfect
-
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:
His victory speech, which will come later tonight, will be studied by pundits seeking to divine his intentions.
From Salon ● Nov. 4, 2026
As Ms. Hall puts it, Medea “sees herself as the agent of Zeus’ justice and an adherent of divine rather than human law.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 25, 2026
Back in Malang, resident Ahmad Saifuddin joined others in praying for divine intervention.
From Barron's ● Oct. 22, 2026
In the east and some other parts, as well as among Hindus in Bangladesh, the festival sees devotees worshipping the divine feminine power with Durga Puja celebrations.
From BBC ● Oct. 19, 2026
Who has need of a divine creator who must sell inferior marmalade?’”
From "Black Swan Green" by David Mitchell
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
But it never does quite marry the two divines.
From Economist ● May 24, 2018
Carrie boards the tube carriage where Aidan is sitting; Lev and Fionn share a birthday; Liam divines which bit of ocean is the right one to bump into Scott mid-dip.
From The Guardian ● Jul. 1, 2017
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
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
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
The water diviner will soon be positioned directly over the subway.
From New York Times ● Sep. 2, 2012
The following day we took a three-hour bus trip to Hammanskraal, a rural ghetto outside Pretoria, there to see what my mother described as the greatest diviner in the country.
From "Kaffir Boy: An Autobiography" by Mark Mathabane
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
Emerson's habitual quest for only the divinest traits and his quickened perception of the best in men enabled him to recognize excellencies which were yet unseen by others.
From Literary Shrines The Haunts of Some Famous American Authors by Theodore F. (Theodore Frelinghuysen) Wolfe
The divinest faculty in man is that by which truth is discovered.
From The Roman Poets of the Republic by W. Y. Sellar
And, even yet, I dare not let it languish, Dare not indulge in memory's rapturous pain; Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish How could I seek the empty world again?
From A Book of Irish Verse Selected from modern writers with an introduction and notes by W. B. Yeats by W. B. (William Butler) Yeats
Shall we ever in this life find words for our divinest moments?
From Playing With Fire by Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
Standard analysis divined from the usual awards season augury skews in favor of Anderson and “One Battle,” too.
From Salon ● Mar. 13, 2026
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
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
Cortes divined the discontent beneath the Alliance’s martial display and would later benefit from it.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
Having said that, it's only two races into the season, so divining any clear pattern would be premature.
From BBC ● Mar. 24, 2026
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
To take inspiration from this fundamental part of L.A.’s past in hopes of divining its future.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 10, 2025
The divining rod in my mind dipped sharply and a spring gushed water when I remembered that I was on a genuine, regulation lifeboat and that such a lifeboat was surely outfitted with supplies.
From "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
