• divine •
Pronunciation: dê-vain (US), di-vain (UK) • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Adjective, verb
Meaning: 1. Pertaining to God or a god, sacred, holy as 'a divine scripture'. 2. Godlike, heavenly, celestial, angelic. 3. Beyond human, excellent, perfect, as 'her hairdo was just divine'. 4. (Verb) To interpret or conjure up by magical insight via a magical object, witch hazel stick, cards, crystal ball, as 'to divine water beneath the ground', or 'to divine the future from tarot cards'.
Notes: Here is a word that hovers between the holy and profane. It refers to God but it also refers to magic powers from a mysterious source. We have two nouns, the ordinary divineness and extraordinary divinity which, when used as a noun can mean "god". 'Divinity fudge' isn't even fudge; it is a fluffy Southern homemade candy based on egg whites beaten until stiff, sugar and vanilla. To divinate (divination, divinator, divinatory) is to foretell the future or contact some other world by supernatural powers.
In Play: As an adjective in its original sense, you may hear things like this: "Phil Anders considers himself a divine gift to women." In its figurative sense, it will occur thus: "Maude Lynn Dresser came to the cotillion in the most divine evening gown." As a verb, we encounter such sentences as this: "The modern news shows mix and match facts with guesses in hopes of divining the outcomes of news in the making."
Word History: Today's Good Word was rented from Old French divin, which it inherited from Latin divinus "related to a god". Latin created its adjective from deus "god, deity", which it inherited from PIE dyeu- "to shine, heavens, god", which we also find in Sanskrit deva "god" and dyauh "sky, heaven", Greek delos "clear" and Zeus, the sky and thunder god, Albanian diel "Sunday", Armenian tiw "day", Welsh diw "god", Breton deiz "day", Irish and Gaelic dia "god". The Romance languages inherited Latin deus, as French dieu, Italian dio, Portuguese deus, Spanish dios, and Romanian zeu and zi "day". Among the Slavic languages we find Czech den, Russian den', Polish dzień, and Serbo-Croatian dan, all meaning "day". Lithuanian has both dievas "god" and dieną "day" and Latvian, both dievs "god" and diena "day". (Now a word of gratitude to Wordmaster William Hupy for suggesting today's divine Good Word back in 2017 and "Slava" for reminding us of it in the Agora.)
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