Other forms: divines, divining
Divine means belonging to a god — divine intervention, divine right, the divine. It is the standard adjective in religion and theology.
It has a second, informal life meaning absolutely wonderful — the cake was divine, she looked divine — and that use is warm, slightly camp and now a little dated. As a verb, to divine is to discover something by intuition or magic: divine the future, and water divining is looking for water with a forked stick. Note diviner and divination, and that the noun the divine means the sacred taken as a whole.
1adjectivedivineBelonging to or coming from a god.
“The book argues for divine intervention on almost every page.”
2adjectivewonderfulWonderful, in informal and slightly dated use.
“That pudding was absolutely divine.”
3verbdiscoverTo discover something by intuition or by magic.
“Nobody could divine what he actually wanted.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
divine is a quality of the sacred.
Also accepted in games: heavenly
Latin divinus meant of a god, from divus, a god — the same root as deity and, at a distance, the day in Latin dies, since the sky god and the daylight were named together. The fortune-telling sense comes from the idea that prophecy is a gift from the gods.
Proto-Indo-European
*dyew-
Latin
dīvīnus — of a god
Old French
divin
English, today
divine
Built from
From Old French divin, from Latin dīvīnus (“of a god”), from divus (“god”). Displaced native godcund.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA