All 3 Uses of
divine
in
Night, by Elie Wiesel
- He sang, or rather he chanted, and the few snatches I caught here and there spoke of divine suffering, of the Shekhinah in Exile, where, according to Kabbalah, it awaits its redemption linked to that of man.†
p. 3.7
- Not to learn it by heart but to discover within the very essence of divinity.†
p. 5.9
- Poor Akiba Drumer, if only he could have kept his faith in God, if only he could have considered this suffering a divine test, he would not have been swept away by the selection.†
p. 77.2 *
Definitions:
-
(1)
(divine as in: to forgive is divine) wonderful; or god-like or coming from God
-
(2)
(divine as in: divined from tea leaves) to discover or predict something supernaturally (as if by magic)
-
(3)
(divine as in: divined through intuition) to discover or guess something -- usually through intuition or reflection
-
(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.