Divine

How to spell divine

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce divine

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does divine mean?

1. adjectiveOf, from, or like a god; sacred, or extremely delightful.
2. verbTo discover or guess something by intuition or supposed supernatural insight.

Divine in a sentence

• adjective

  The choir sang a hymn praising divine mercy and grace.

• verb

  She could divine his mood from the way he closed the door.

• adjective

  She described the dessert as absolutely divine after the first bite.

• verb

  The old farmer used a hazel rod to divine where water lay underground.

Where does divine come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin divinus, meaning 'belonging to a god' or 'godlike', which was built on divus, an old word for a god or deity that is closely related to deus, the ordinary Latin word for 'god'. English took it through Old French divin during the 1300s, originally as an adjective describing anything holy or sacred. The same divus root sits inside 'deity' and even the name Jupiter's title 'Jove', so the family is large and ancient. The verb sense, meaning to foretell or discover by intuition, grew from the practice of divination, since priests claimed to read the will of the gods. A handy memory aid: the heart of the word is just 'divin', spelled with a single i in the middle and the silent e on the end, exactly as in the related 'divinity'.

How the word is built

• divin- (from Latin divus: a god, deity)
• -ine (adjective suffix meaning 'of the nature of')