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
-
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
-
predivinableadjective
-
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:
They saw messages from the divine in thunder and lightning, bird flight and the entrails of sacrificed animals.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 18, 2026
There have been eight female emperors on the Chrysanthemum Throne in Japan's imperial family, whose divine status was renounced after World War II.
From Barron's ● Jul. 17, 2026
Another clear argument against divine design is the recurrent laryngeal nerve, which takes a course that simply makes no sense to invent.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 11, 2026
This would “place us openly under the divine protection,” he noted.
From Salon ● Jun. 29, 2026
The thirteen finches were not created by some divine whim, but by “natural descent”—cascading downward and outward from an original ancestral finch.
From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee
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
“But the old place is finished,” Mr Stockton divines, “and it’s never coming back.”
From Economist ● Apr. 23, 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
Lacking recourse to the United Nations, the Moabites turned to a diviner named Balaam to curse the Israelis.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 30, 2020
“I have no plan when I go into the studio,” said Garry Nichols, who has a sideline as a water diviner.
From New York Times ● Jun. 5, 2013
By the time Cass, a diviner who’s had disturbing visions before, returns with a policeman a second time, she has started to doubt what she saw.
From New York Times ● Jan. 19, 2011
Lord-a-mighty, if she didn’t sound like a diviner herself.
From "Moon Over Manifest" by Clare Vanderpool
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
The two divinest things this world has got,
From Life of John Keats His Life and Poetry, his Friends, Critics and After-fame by Colvin, Sidney
The divinest faculty in man is that by which truth is discovered.
From The Roman Poets of the Republic by Sellar, W. Y.
They travel on from height to height, In splendour to diffuse The truth that earth's divinest light Hath no abiding hues.
From A Century of Emblems by Cautley, G. S.
To him poetry was the divinest of the arts.
From Vondel's Lucifer by Vondel, Joost van den
Meanwhile, Alex Fynn, an author and football consultant, divined that match-going fans would be seen by clubs as "incidental".
From BBC ● May 4, 2026
Standard analysis divined from the usual awards season augury into the mix 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
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
Alive one moment, dead the next, because that is how my divided brain divined the world.
From "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver
Others have turned toward astrology, a less scientific but increasingly popular way of divining meaning from the night sky.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 31, 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
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
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
You know things are bad when the United States Marine Corps is using stethoscopes and divining rods.
From "The Wednesday Wars" by Gary D. Schmidt
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.
