# divine

Pronunciation: say "di-VYN" /dɪˈvaɪn/

## Adjective

1. Of, from, or relating to a god; having the nature or qualities of a god, such as holiness.
   - Simple: Coming from or connected with a god, or being like a god.
   - _Ancient rulers often claimed a divine mandate to justify their authority._
   - _The temple was believed to hold divine power passed down from the gods._
2. Extremely good, beautiful or delightful; of outstanding excellence. *(colloquial)*
   - Simple: Wonderful, or extremely good, lovely or enjoyable.
   - _Her new dress looked divine at the evening party._
   - _The dessert was divine, light and bursting with flavor._

## Noun

3. God or a god, thought of as a transcendent concept.
   - Simple: God seen as a higher power above everything.
   - _Philosophers have long debated whether the divine can be known through reason._
   - _For the mystics, union with the divine was the highest goal of life._
5. A member of the clergy or a person learned in theology, especially in earlier centuries.
   - Simple: A priest or minister, or someone who studies religion deeply, mostly in older writing.
   - _The seventeenth-century divine produced a famous commentary on scripture._
   - _Leading divines of the age argued over the nature of grace._

## Verb

4. To sense or figure out something by means of intuition or insight.
   - Simple: To understand or guess something by sensing it, without being told or working it out step by step.
   - _Good teachers can divine a student's confusion from a single glance._
   - _She divined the truth from the look on his face._
6. To predict what is going to happen, typically by practicing divination.
   - Simple: To say what will happen in the future, often by magic or signs.
   - _The oracle divined a coming famine from the entrails of a bird._
   - _Ancient seers tried to divine the fate of the harvest by watching the flight of birds._
8. To search for underground water or objects using a divining rod.
   - Simple: To look for water or things underground using a special stick.
   - _He claimed he could divine groundwater anywhere on the property._
   - _She divined the buried pipes using two bent metal rods._

## Adjective

7. Relating to theology or the study of divinity. *(archaic)*
   - Simple: About the study of God and religion.
10. Foreboding; sensing or anticipating future events. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: Having a feeling that something bad will happen before it does.
11. Immortal; chosen or saved after death. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: Living forever, or saved after death.

## Verb

9. To make divine; to treat as a god. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: To make someone or something into a god.

## Origin

**Meanings 1–3, 5, 7, 10–11** — Latin divus ("god") gave dīvīnus ("of a god"), which became Old French divin. The word pushed out godcund, the native Old English term.
**Meanings 4, 6, 8–9** — Latin dīvīnō led to Middle French deviner and then to Middle English devine or devin, which this sense later replaced.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/divine (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).