Divine Meaning: Sacred, Heavenly and Sometimes Just Delicious

What does divine mean? The senses in order

1. Relating to God or a god (adjective): divine will, divine worship, a divine being.
2. Godlike or heavenly in quality (adjective): music or beauty so moving that it seems more than human.
3. Excellent or delightful (adjective, informal): "This mango ice cream is divine." It can sound a little playful or old fashioned.
4. To find out by intuition or guesswork (verb): "She divined from his silence that the news was bad."
5. To search for underground water or metal using a forked stick or rods (verb), a practice called dowsing.
6. A religious scholar or member of the clergy (noun, dated): "a famous divine of the eighteenth century."

The divine in different traditions

As a noun with the, the divine means God, the gods, or the sacred in general. Each tradition gives it its own shade:

• In Christianity, the word is tied to God and to ideas such as divine grace and divine providence, God's care and guidance in the world.
• In Islam, divine often appears with revelation and will, describing what comes from God.
• In Judaism, it describes God's commandments and presence.
• In Hinduism, English speakers often use the divine for the sacred that many believe is present in all beings, and for many forms of deity, such as the divine mother.
• In more spiritual but not religious talk, the divine can mean a higher power or a sacred quality within people and nature.

For related terms, see deity and grace, or our faith and belief section.

Divine meaning in English sentences

• Many pilgrims believe the spring was a gift of divine mercy.
• The choir's final hymn sounded almost divine in the old stone hall.
• Grandma's cardamom cake was absolutely divine.
• From the way the manager avoided eye contact, I divined that the project had been cancelled.
• The old farmer claimed he could divine water with two bent copper wires.

Common phrases with divine

• Divine intervention: help that seems to come from God, often used humorously for lucky escapes.
• Divine right of kings: a historical belief that monarchs got their authority directly from God, not from the people.
• Divine service: a formal term for a religious service.
• Divining rod: the forked stick used in dowsing.
• Divine inspiration: an idea or talent believed to be given by God; loosely, a sudden brilliant idea.

Word forms and close words

Divinity is the noun for being divine, and also the study of religion ("a divinity school"). Divinely is the adverb. Divination means trying to learn the future or hidden truths through signs, and someone who does it is a diviner. People who sought such knowledge in ancient times often consulted an oracle.

Close words include holy, sacred and heavenly. Holy and sacred stress being set apart for worship; divine stresses the source, God or a god. For beauty that feels beyond words, sublime and ethereal are also used.

Origin of divine

Any divine definition starts with the root. English has used divine since the late 1300s. It arrived from Old French, whose source was Latin divinus, of a god, built on divus, a god. The verb, first meaning to foretell the future, appeared around the same time. The weaker praise sense, excellent or heavenly, developed by the late 1400s. Spellings like devine are mistakes.