What does "divine" mean?
Divine: Proceeding from God; as, divine judgments. "Divine protection." Bacon.
Additional senses
- 2.Appropriated to God, or celebrating his praise; religious; pious; holy; as, divine service; divine songs; divine worship.
- 3.Pertaining to, or proceeding from, a deity; partaking of the nature of a god or the gods. "The divine Apollo said." Shak.
- 4.Godlike; heavenly; excellent in the highest degree; supremely admirable; apparently above what is human. In this application, the word admits of comparison; as, the divinest mind. Sir J. Davies. "The divine Desdemona." Shak. A divine sentence is in the lips of the king. Prov. xvi.
- 5.But not to one in this benighted age Is that diviner inspiration given. Gray.
- 6.Presageful; foreboding; prescient. [Obs.] Yet oft his heart, divine of something ill, Misgave him. Milton.
- 7.Relating to divinity or theology. Church history and other divine learning. South.
- 8.One skilled in divinity; a theologian. "Poets were the first divines." Denham.
- 9.A minister of the gospel; a priest; a clergyman. The first divines of New England were surpassed by none in extensive erudition. J. Woodbridge.
- 10.To foresee or foreknow; to detect; to anticipate; to conjecture. A sagacity which divined the evil designs. Bancroft.
- 11.To foretell; to predict; to presage. Darest thou . . . divine his downfall Shak.
- 12.To render divine; to deify. [Obs.] Living on earth like angel new divined. Spenser.
- 13.To use or practice divination; to foretell by divination; to utter prognostications. The prophets thereof divine for money. Micah iii.
- 14.2. To have or feel a presage or foreboding. Suggest but truth to my divining thoughts. Shak.
- 15.To conjecture or guess; as, to divine rightly.
Sources
- Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 edition (public domain, via GCIDE / Project Gutenberg).
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- Published: 2026-07-17T00:00:00-07:00 · Modified: 2026-07-17T00:00:00-07:00