divine

英文詞源

divine

divine: [14] Like deity, divine comes ultimately from Indo-European *deiwos, an ancestor whose godly connotations seem to have developed from earlier associations with ‘sky’ and ‘day’, and which probably originally meant ‘shining’. Its Latin descendants included deus ‘god’ (source of English deity) and the adjective dīvus ‘godlike’ (the noun use of its feminine form, dīva, for ‘goddess’ entered English via Italian as diva ‘prima donna’ [19]).

From dīvus was derived the further adjective dīvīnus, which became Old French devin and eventually English divine. Dīvīnus was used as a noun meaning, in classical times, ‘soothsayer’ (whence, via the Latin derivative dīvīnāre, the English verb divine) and in the Middle Ages ‘theologian’ (whence the nominal use of English divine in the same sense).
=> deity

divine (adj.)

c. 1300, from Old French devin (12c.), from Latin divinus "of a god," from divus "a god," related to deus "god, deity" (see Zeus). Weakened sense of "excellent" had evolved by late 15c.

divine (v.)

"to conjure, to guess," originally "to make out by supernatural insight," mid-14c., from Old French deviner, from Vulgar Latin *devinare, dissimilated from *divinare, from Latin divinus (see divine (adj.)), which also meant "soothsayer." Related: Divined; diviner; divining. Divining rod (or wand) attested from 1650s.

divine (n.)

c. 1300, "soothsayer," from Old French devin, from Latin divinus (adj.); see divine (adj.). Meaning "ecclesiastic, theologian" is from late 14c.