Meaning & use
divine
Last updated
Meanings
adjectivenot comparablereligion
Of, from, or like a god; having holy or sacred qualities.
Grammar: Often before a noun (divine power) but can also follow be (they believed the king was divine).
Patterns
- divine intervention
- divine will
- a divine being
- divine punishment
The temple was seen as the home of a divine being.
In the story, the hero receives divine help in his darkest hour.
They believed the plague was divine punishment.
adjectivenot comparableinformal
Extremely good, beautiful, or pleasing; wonderful.
Grammar: Follows verbs like be, taste, and look; informal and often exaggerated.
Patterns
- taste divine
- look divine
- absolutely divine
The lemon tart was simply divine.
You look divine in that dress.
The hotel room smelled of roses; it was divine.
verbtransitiveformal
To discover or guess something through intuition or insight rather than direct evidence.
Grammar: Takes an object: divine the truth, or a that-clause: divined that something was wrong.
Patterns
- divine something
- divine that
- divine the meaning
No one could divine what he really wanted.
She divined from his silence that the news was bad.
The meaning of the poem is hard to divine.
verbtransitive or intransitivespecialist
To find underground water or minerals using a special rod or stick.
Grammar: Used with for when there is no object: divine for water; with an object: divine water.
Patterns
- divine for water
- divine water
During the drought, a farmer paid a dowser to divine for water.
He claims he can divine underground water with a forked stick.
Word forms
| third person singular | divines |
|---|---|
| past tense | divined |
| past participle | divined |
| -ing form | divining |
Common combinations
- divine intervention
- Surviving the crash with only bruises felt like divine intervention.
- divine will
- They accepted the defeat as the will of the divine.
- divine being
- Angels are described as divine beings in many traditions.
- divine the truth
- No one could divine the truth from his confusing letter.
- taste divine
- The soup tasted absolutely divine on such a cold day.
Synonyms and how they differ
- godly
- Similar but usually describes a person's character; divine also covers things that belong to or come from a god.
- sacred
- Set apart as holy and deserving respect; sacred things are not necessarily connected to a god at all.
- intuit
- To know something by intuition; close to divine as a verb, but more modern and neutral in tone.
- deduce
- To reach a conclusion by reasoning step by step; divine suggests sudden insight rather than logic.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: divine or define?
divine vs define
Define means to state the exact meaning of a word or idea; divine as a verb means to sense or discover something by intuition. They sound similar but differ in meaning.
Practice
The homemade ice cream was absolutely ___ — everyone asked for the recipe.
Choose one answer.
In informal English, divine means wonderful, which matches everyone asking for the recipe. Dreadful is the opposite in meaning; mortal and vague cannot describe how food tastes.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “divine”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.