The Only Use of
divine
in
Things Fall Apart
- After the death of Ekwefi's second child, Okonkwo had gone to a medicine man, who was also a diviner of the Afa Oracle, to enquire what was amiss.
p. 77.6diviner = someone who practices the art of learning of the future through supernatural means
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 discover or predict 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.