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
-
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)
-
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
-
undivinedadjective
-
undiviningadjective
-
divinelyadverb
-
half-divinelyadverb
-
subdivinelyadverb
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
divinesimple
-
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:
But its performance was impossible to divine in qualifying because the straight-line mode - which opens the front and rear wings to reduce drag - was not working on Fernando Alonso's car.
From BBC ● Aug. 21, 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
The Iranians picked a quote referring to the Battle of Badr, in which the Prophet Muhammad’s followers defeated a much larger force through what was interpreted as a divine intervention.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 6, 2026
Later my sons set upon it like apprentice palm readers, trying to divine the fate of their world from the lengths and curves of its rivers.
From "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver
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
He hears the story of Lancelot and divines his own magic, protective spear.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 19, 2015
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
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
Their Madonnas, Annunciations, Nativities and the like, are the sculptural counterpart to Angelico's divinest paintings, though never quite attaining to his spiritual insight and supra-sensible gaze upon life.
From The Story of Florence by Edmund G. Gardner
You were calling the sofa the divinest of all creatures, I suppose, or perhaps asking the—the piano to put on its shoes and—elope with you.
From A Proposal Under Difficulties A Farce by John Kendrick Bangs
The divinest faculty in man is that by which truth is discovered.
From The Roman Poets of the Republic by W. Y. Sellar
God's divinest burneth plain Through the crystal diaphane Of our loves that love you.
From The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Vol. I by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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
All of this she had through the painful years divined.
From "Go Tell It on the Mountain" by James Baldwin
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
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
But there’s a difference between a witness with credibility problems, however great, and one who is lying, and divining that distinction is what the jury system is for.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 13, 2024
But the muvuki unrolled a reed mat on the ground and removed four hakata, or divining sticks, from the pot.
From "A Girl Named Disaster" by Nancy Farmer
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.
