All 3 Uses of
divine
in
Northanger Abbey
- Not one, however, started with rapturous wonder on beholding her, no whisper of eager inquiry ran round the room, nor was she once called a divinity by anybody.†
Chpt 2 *divinity = the state of being god-like; or of being a god
- As soon as divine service was over, the Thorpes and Allens eagerly joined each other; and after staying long enough in the pump-room to discover that the crowd was insupportable, and that there was not a genteel face to be seen, which everybody discovers every Sunday throughout the season, they hastened away to the Crescent, to breathe the fresh air of better company.†
Chpt 5
- Why he had done it, what could have provoked him to such a breach of hospitality, and so suddenly turned all his partial regard for their daughter into actual ill will, was a matter which they were at least as far from divining as Catherine herself; but it did not oppress them by any means so long; and, after a due course of useless conjecture, that "it was a strange business, and that he must be a very strange man," grew enough for all their indignation and wonder; though Sarah indeed still indulged in the sweets of incomprehensibility, exclaiming and conjecturing with youthful ardour.†
Chpt 29 *
Definitions:
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(1)
(divine as in: to forgive is divine) wonderful; or god-like or coming from God
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(2)
(divine as in: divined from tea leaves) to predict or discover something supernaturally (as if by magic)
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(3)
(divine as in: divined through intuition) to discover or guess something -- usually through intuition or reflection
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(4)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
In the time of Shakespeare, divine was sometimes used as a noun to reference a priest or a person of the church. (To remember that sense, think of the clergyman as having come from God).
Divinity typically refers to a god or to a school of religion, but on rare occasions, it refers to the name of a kind of soft white candy. To remember that sense, you might think of it as tasting divine/wonderful.