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to be sung; a song.

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Although we lay altogether aside the consideration of ditty or matter, the very harmony of sounds being framed in due sort, and carried from the ear to the spiritual faculties of our souls, is, by a native puissance and efficacy, greatly available to bring to a perfect temper whatsoever is there troubled. Hooker.

Being young, I framed to the harp Many an English ditty lovely well, And gave the tongue a helpful ornament. Shaks. Strike the melodious harp, shrill timbrels ring, And to the warbling lute soft ditties sing.

His annual wound in Lebanon, allur'd The Syrian damsels to lament his fate, In am'rous ditties, all a summer's day.

Sandys.

Milton.

Mean while the rural ditties were not mute, Temper'd to the oaten flute; Rough satyrs danc'd.

Milton.

They will be sighing and singing under thy inexorable windows lamentable ditties, and call thee cruel.

Dryden.

DIVA N. n. s. [an Arabick or Turkish word.]

1. The council of the Oriental princes. 2. Any council assembled: used commonly in a sense of dislike.

Forth rush'd in haste the great consulting
peers,
Rais'd from the dark divan, and with like joy
Congratulant approach'd him.
Milton.

Swift to the queen the herald Medon ran, Who heard the consult of the dire divan. Pope. To DIVA'RICATE. v.n. [divaricatus, Latin.] To be parted into two; to become bifid.

The partitions are strained across: one of them divaricates in two, and another into several small ones. Woodward.

To DIVA RICATE. v. a. To divide into two.

A slender pipe is produced forward towards the throat, whereinto it is at last inserted, and is there divaricated, after the same manner as the spermatick vessels. Grew. DIVARICATION. n. s. [divaricatio, Lat.] 1. Partition into two.

Dogs, running before their masters, will stop at a divarication of the way, till they see which hand their masters will take.

2. Division of opinions.

Ray.

To take away all doubt, or any probable divarication, the curse is plainly specified. Brown. To DIVE. v. a. [dippan, Saxon.] 1. To sink voluntarily under water.

1 am not yet informed, whether when a diver diveth, having his eyes open, and swimmeth upon his back, he sees things in the air greater or less. Bacon's Natural History.

Around our pole the spiry dragon glides, And, like a winding stream, the bears divides, The less and greater; who, by fate's decree, Abhor to dive beneath the southern sea.

Dryden.

That the air in the blood vessels of live bodies has a communication with the outward air, I think, seems plain from the experiments of human creatures being able to bear air of much greater density in diving, and of much less upon the tops of mountains, provided the changes be made gradually. Arbuthnot.

2. To go under water in search of any thing.

Crocodiles defend those pearls which lie in the lakes: the poor Indians are eaten up by them, when they dive for the pearl. Raleigh. The knave deserves it, when he tempts the

main,

Where folly fights for kings, or dives for gain.

Pape 3. To go deep into any question, doc. trine, or science.

4.

The wits that div'd most deep and soar'd most high,

Seeking man's pow'rs, have found his weak

ness such.

Davies.

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You should have div'd into my inmost thoughts. Philips. To immerge into any business or condition.

Sweet prince, th' untainted virtue of your years

Hath not yet div'd into the world's deceit, Nor can distinguish. Shakspeare's Richard III. 5. To depart from observation; to sink.

Dive, thoughts, down to my soul. Shaksp. To DIVE. v. a. To explore by diving.

Then Brutus, Rome's first martyr, I must

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He would have him, as I conceive it, to be no superficial and floating artificer; but a diver into causes, and into the mysteries of proportion. To DIVE'RGE. v. n. [divergo, Latin.] Wotton's Architecture. To tend various ways from one point. Homogeneal rays, which flow from several points of any object and fall perpendicularly on any reflecting surface, shall afterwards diverge from so many points. Newton.

DIVERGENT. adj. [from divergens, Lat.] Tending to various parts from one point.

DIVERS. adj. [diversus, Lat.] Several; 1.
sundry; more than one. Out of use.
We have divers examples in the church of such
as, by fear, being compelled to sacrifice to strange
gods, repented, and kept still the office of
preaching the gospel.
Whitgift.

The teeth breed when the child is a year and
a half old: then they cast them, and new ones
come about seven years; but divers have back-
ward teeth come at twenty, some at thirty and
forty.
Bacon's Natural History.
Divers letters were shot into the city with ar-
rows, wherein Solyman's councils were revealed.
Knolles.

Divers friends thought it strange, that a white dry body should acquire a rich colour upon the fusion of spring-water. Boyle on Colours, DIVERSE. adj. [diversus, Latin.]

1. Different from another.

Four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another. Daniel.

2. Different from itself; various; multidiffused.

form;

Eloquence is a great and diverse thing, nor did she yet ever favour any man so much as to be wholly his. Ben Jonson.

3. In different directions.

used but in the last sense.

The gourd

It is little

And thirsty cucumber, when they perceive
Th' approaching olive, with resentment fly
Her fatty fibres, and with tendrils creep
Diverse, detesting contact.
To seize his papers, Curl, was next thy care;
Philips.
His papers light fly diverse, tost in air.
DIVERSIFICATION. n. s. [from diver-
Pope.
sify.]

1. The act of changing forms or qualities.
If you consider how variously several things
may be compounded, you will not wonder that
such fruitful principles, or manners of diversi
fication, should generate differing colours. Boyle.
2. Variation; variegation.

3. Variety of forms; multiformity. 4. Change; alteration.

This, which is here called a change of will, is not a change of his will, but a change in the object, which seems to make a diversification of the will, but indeed is the same will diversified.

TO DIVERSIFY. v. a. [diversifier, Fr.] Hale's Origin of Mankind. 1. To make different from another; to distinguish; to discriminate.

The act of turning any thing off from its course.

Cutting off the tops, and pulling off the buds, work retention of the sap for a time, and diversion of it to the sprouts that were not forward. Bacon's Natural History I have ranked this diversion of christian prac tice among the effects of our contentions. Decay of Piety. 2. The cause by which any thing is turned from its proper course or tendency. Fortunes, honour, friends, Are mere diversions from love's proper object, Which only is itself. Denham's Sophy. 3. Sport; something that unbends the mind by turning it off from care. Diversion seems to be something lighter than amusement, and less forcible than pleasure.

There may be many species of spirits, as much separated and diversified one from another as the species of sensible things are distinguished one from another. Locke.

You for those ends whole days in council sit, And the diversions of your youthforget. Waller. In the book of games and diversions, the rea der's mind may be supposed to be relaxed. Addison's Spectator. Such productions of wit and humour as expose vice and folly, furnish useful diversions to readers. Addison's Freeholder. 4. [In war.] The act or purpose of drawing the enemy off from some design, by threatening or attacking a distant part. DIVERSITY. n. s. [diversité, Fr. from diversitas, Latin.]

Male souls are diversified with so many characters, that the world has not variety of materials sufficient to furnish out their different inclinations. Addison's Spectator. ments for Grecian generals, than for Milton to was easier for Homer to find proper senti diversify his infernal council with proper cha2. To make different from itself; to vary ; Addison's Spectator.

racters.

to variegate.

The country being diversified between hills and dales, woods and plains, one place more dear, another more darksome, it is a pleasant picture. There is, in the producing of some species, a Sidney. composition of matter, which may be much di

versified. DIVERSION. 27. St

Bacon.

[from divert.]

1. Difference; dissimilitude; unlikeness. Then is there in this diversity no contrariety.

Hooker. They cannot be divided, but they will prove opposite; and, not resting in a bare diversity, rise into a contrariety. South. The most common diversity of human constitutions arises from the solid parts, as to their different degrees of strength and tension.

2. Variety.

Arbuthnot.

The diversity of ceremonies in this kind ought not to cause dissension in churches.

Hooker.

Society cannot subsist without a diversity of stations; and if God should grant every one a middle station, he would defeat the very scheme of happiness proposed in it. 3. Distinct being; not identity. Rogers.

Considering any thing as existing at any determined time and place, we compare it with itself existing at another time, and thereon form the 4. Variegation. ideas of identity and diversity.

Locke,

Pope

A waving glow his bloomy beds display,
Blushing in bright diversities of day.
DI VERSLY. adv. [from diverse.]
1. In different ways, differently; variously.

The lack we all have, as well of ghostly as of earthly favours, is in each kind easily known; but the gifts of God are so diversly bestowed, that it seldom appeareth what all receive; what all stand in need of seldom lieth hid. Hooker. Both of them do diversly work, as they have their medium diversly disposed. Bacon.

Whether the king did permit it to save his purse, or to communicate the envy of a business displeasing to his people, was diversly interpreted.

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I rather will subject me to the malice

Of a diverted blood and bloody brother. Shaksp. Knots, by the conflux of the meeting sap, Infect the sound pine, and divert his grain, Tortive and errant, from his course of growth. Shakspeare. He finds no reason to have his rent abated, because a greater part of it is diverted from his

landlord.

Locke. They diverted raillery from improper objects, and gave a new turn to ridicule. Addison.

Nothing more is requisite for producing all the variety of colours, and degrees of refrangibility, than that the rays of light be bodies of different sizes; the least of which may make violet, the weakest and darkest of the colours, and be more easily diverted by refracting surfaces from the right course; and the rest, as they are bigger and bigger, make the stronger and more lucid colours, blue, green, yellow, and red, and be more and more difficultly diverted.

Newton.

2. To draw forces to a different part.

The kings of England would have had an ab solute conquest of Ireland, if their whole power had been employed; but still there arose sundry occasions, which divided and diverted their power some other way. Davies en Ireland,

3. To withdraw the mind.

Alas, how simple, to these cates compar'd, Was that crude apple that diverted Eve! Milton. They avoid pleasure, lest they should have their affections tainted by any sensuality, and diverted from the love of him who is to be the only comfort. Addison on Italy. Maro's muse, not wholly bent On what is gainful, sometimes she diverts

From solid counsel.

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ness.

How fond soever men are of bad divertise ment, it will prove mirth which ends in heaviDIVERTIVE. adj. [from divert.] RecreGovernment of the Tongue. ative; amusive; exhilarating. A word not fully authorized.

I would not exclude the common accidents of life, nor even things of a pleasant and divertice nature, so they are innocent, from conversation. Rogers.

To DIVE'ST. v. a. [devestir, French. The English word is therefore more properly written devest. See DEVEST.] To strip; to make naked; to denude. Then of his arms Androgeus he divests; His sword, his shield, he takes, and plumed Denham. Let us divest the gay phantom of temporal happiness of all that false lustre and ornament in which the pride, the passions, and the folly of men have dressed it up. Rogers DIVE STURE. n. s. [from divest.] The act of putting off.

crests.

The divesture of mortality dispenses them from those laborious and avocating duties which are here requisite to be performed. Boyle, DIVIDABLE. adj. [from divide.] Separate; different; parted. Not used.

How could communities maintain Peaceful commerce from dividable shores? Shaksp. DIVI DANT. adj. [from divide.] Differ. ent; separate. Not in use.

Twinn'd brothers of one womb, Whose procreation, residence, and birth Scarce is dividant, touch with several fortunes. Shaksp To DIVIDE. v. a. [divido, Latin.] 1. To part one whole into different pieces.

2.

Philips.

4. To please; to exhilarate. See DIVER

SION.

An ingenious gentleman did divert or instruct the kingdom by his papers.

5. To subvert; to destroy; in Shakspeare, unless it belong to the first sense.

Frights, changes, horrours,

Divert and crack, rend and deracinate

Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one, and half to the other. 1 Kings

Let old Timotheus yield the prize,
Or both divide the crown;

He rais'd a mortal to the skies,

Dryden.

She drew an angel down. They were divided into little independent societies, speaking different languages.

Locke.

To separate; to keep apart, by standing as a partition between.

Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the

waters.

You must go

Genesis.

Where seas, and winds, and desarts will divide

Swift.

you.

3.

To disunite by discord.

4.

The unity and married calm of states. Shaksp. DIVERTER. 2. s. [from the verb.] Any thing that diverts or alleviates.

Angling was, after tedious study, a rest to his mind, a cheerer of s spirits, and a diverter of sadness. Walton.

To DIVERTI'SE. v. a. [divertiser, Fr. diverto, Latin.] To please; to exhilarate; to divert. Little used.

Let òrators instruct, let them divertise, and let them move us; this is what is properly meant by the word salt.

Dryden.

Dryden.

Luke,

There shall five in one house be divided.

To deal out; to give in shares. Then in the midst a tearing groan did break The name of Antony: it was divided Between her heart and lips.

Shaksp

Divide the prey into two parts; between them that took the war upon them, who went out to battle; and between all the congregation.

Numbers Cham and Japhet were heads and princes over their families, and had a right to divide the earth by famílies. Lacks.

To DIVIDE. v. n.
1. To part; to sunder.
To break friendship.

DIVERTISEMENT. n. s. [divertissement, 3.

3

Brothers divide.

Love cools, friendship falls off, DIVIDEND. n. s. [from divide.] Shakspeare's King Lear. 1. A share; the part allotted in division. Each person shall adapt to himself his pecu liar share, like other dividends. Decay of Piety. If on such petty merits you confer So vast a prize, let each his portion share: Make a just dividend and, if not all, The greater part to Diomede will fall. Dryden. 2. [In arithmetick.] The number given to be parted or divided. Cocker, DIVIDER. n. s. [from divide.]

1. That which parts any thing into pieces.

According as the body moved, the divider did more and more enter into the divided body; so it joined itself to some new parts of the medium or divided body, and did in like manner forsake others.

2. A distributor; he who deals out to
Digby.
each his share.

Who made me a judge or divider over you.
Luke.

3. A disuniter; the person or cause that
breaks concord.

Money, the great divider of the world, hath, by a strange revolution, been the great uniter of a divided people. Swift.

4. A particular kind of compasses DIVIDUAL. adj. [dividuus, Latin.] Divided; shared or participated in common with others.

She shines,

Revolv'd on heav'n's great axle, and her reign
With thousand lesser lights dividual holds,
With thousand thousand stars!
Milton.

4.

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The divinest and the richest mind,
Both by art's purchase and by nature's dower,
That ever was from heav'n to earth confin'd.
Davies.

Presageful; divining; prescient.
Yet oft his heart, divine of something ill,
Misgave him; he the fault'ring measure felt.
Milton.

DIVINE. n. s.

1. A minister of the gospel; a priest; a
clergyman.

Claudio must die to-morrow: let him be fur-
nished with divines, and have all charitable pre-
paration.
Shaksp

Give Martius leave to proceed in his discourse; for he spoke like a divine in armour. Bacon's Holy War.

A divine has nothing to say to the wisest con-
gregation, which he may not express in a man-
ner to be understood by the meannest among
them.
Swift.

2. A man skilled in divinity; a theolo-
gian.

Th' eternal cause in their immortal lines
Was taught, and poets were the first divines.
Denbam
To DIVINE. v. a. [divino, Latin.] To
foretel; to foreknow; to presage.

Why dost thou say king Richard is depos'd?
Dar'st thou, thou little better thing than earth,
Divine his downfal?
Shaksp.

To DIVINE. V. N.

1. To utter prognostication.

Shaksp

Then is Cæsar and he knit together. If I
were to divine of this unity, I would not pro-
phesy so.
The prophets thereof divine for money. Mic.
2. To feel presages.

DIVINATION. n. s. [divinatio, Latin.] 1. Divination is a prediction or foretelling of future things, which are of a secret and hidden nature, and cannot be known by any human means. Certain tokens they noted in birds, or in the Ayliffe. 3. entrails of beasts, or by other the like frivolous divinations. Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, Hooker. neither is there any divination against Israel.

Numbers.

His countenance did imprint an awe, And naturally all souls to his did bow;

grow.

As wands of divination downward draw,
And point to beds where sov'reign gold doth
The excellency of the soul is seen by its
Dryden.
power of divining in dreams: that several such
divinations have been made, none can question
who believes the holy writings.
2. Conjectural presage or prediction.
Addison.
Tell thou thy earl his divination lies,
And I will take it as a sweet disgrace. Shaksp.
DIVINE. adj. [divinus, Latin.]
1. Partaking of the nature of God.

Was hero-make, half human, half divine.
Her line

2. Proceeding from God; not natural;
Dryden.
not human.
The benefit of nature's light is not thought
excluded as unnecessary, because the necessity
of a divine light is magnified.
Hooker.

Divine contrivance, and a God adore. Blackm. Instructed, you'd explore 3. Excellent in a supreme degree. In this sense it may admit of comparison,

If secret powers

Suggest but truth to my divining thoughts,
This pretty lad will prove our country's bliss.

Shaksp.

To conjecture; to guess.

The best of commentators can but guess at his meaning; none can be certain he has divined rightly.

Dryden

He took it with a bow, and soon divin'd
The seeming toy was not for nought design'd.

Dryden

In change of torment would be ease:
Could you divine what lovers bear,
Even you, Prometheus, would confess
There is no vulture like despair.
DIVINELY. adv. [from divine.]
1. By the agency or influence of God.

Granville.

Faith, as we use the word, called commonly divine faith, has to do with no propositions but those which are supposed to be divinely inspired.

Locke

This topick was very fitly and divinely made
use of by our apostle, in his conference with
philosophers, and the inquisitive people of
Athens.
Bentley.

2. Excellently; in the supreme degree.
The Grecians most divinely have given to the
active perfection of men, a name expressing both
beauty and goodness.
Hooker.

She fair, divinely fair! fit love for gods.

Exalted Socrates! divinely brave!
Injur'd he fell, and dying he forgave;
Too noble for revenge.
3. In a manner noting a deity.

Milton.

Creech,

His golden horns appear'd,
That on the forehead shone divinely bright,

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2. Excellence in the supreme degree.
By Jupiter, an angel! or, if not,
An earthly paragon: behold divineness
No elder than a boy.

Grew.

Shaksp.

DIVINER. 2. s. [from To divine.] 1. One that professes divination, or the art of revealing occult things by supernatural means.

This drudge of the devil, this diviner, laid claim to me, called me Dromio, and swore I was assured to her; told me what privy marks I had about me. Shaksp Expelled his oracles, and common temples of delusion, the devil runs into corners, exercising meaner trumperies, and acting his deceits in witches, magicians, diviners, and such inferior seducers. Brown's Vulgar Errours.

2. Conjecturer; guesser.

If he himself be conscious of nothing he then thought on, he must be a notable diviner of thoughts, that can assure him that he was thinking. Locke. DIVINERESS. n. s. [from diviner.] A prophetess; a woman professing divination.

The mad divineress had plainly writ,
A time should come, but many ages yet,
In which sinister destinies ordain

A dame should drown with all her feather'd
train.

Dryden. DIVINITY. n. s. [divinité, Fr. divinitas, Latin.]

1. Participation of the nature and excellence of God; deity; godhead.

As with new wine intoxicated both,
They swim in mirth, and fancy that they feel
Divinity within them breeding wings,
Wherewith to scorn the earth.

Milton.

When he attributes divinity to other things than God, it is only a divinity by way of participation, Stilling fleet.

z. God; the Deity; the Supreme Being;

the Cause of causes.

"Tis the Divinity that stirs within us,

"Tis Heav'n itself that points out an hereafter, And intimates eternity to man.

3. False god.

Vain idols, deities that ne'er before

Addison.

In Israel's lands had fix'd their dire abodes, Beastly divinities, and droves of gods.

4. Celestial being.

Prior.

Ged doubtless can govern this machine he could create, by more direct and easy methods than employing these subservient divinities.

Cheyne.

5. The science of divine things; theology.

Hear him but reason in divinity, And, all admiring, with an inward wish You would desire the king were made a prelate.

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Shaksp

Shaksp.

6.

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They say there is divinity in odd numbers, either in nativity, chance, or death. Shaksp DIVI'SIBLE. adj. [divisibilis, Latin.] Capable of being divided into parts; discerptible; separable.

When we frame in our minds any notion of matter, we conceive nothing else but extension and bulk, which is impenetrable, or divisible and passive. Bentley DIVISIBILITY. n. s. [divisibilité, Fr.] The quality of admitting division or separation of parts.

The most palpable absurdities will press the asserters of infinite divisibility. Glanville. This will easily appear to any one, who will let his thoughts loose in the vast expansion of space, or divisibility of matter. Locke. DIVISIBLENESS. n. s. [from divisible.] Divisibility.

Naturalists disagree about the origin of mo tion, and the indefinite divisibleness of matter. Boyle. DIVISION. n. 5. [divisio, Latin.] 1. The act of dividing any thing into parts.

2. The state of being divided.

Thou madest the spirit of the firmament, and commanded it to part asunder, and to make a division betwixt the waters. 2 Esdras.

3. That by which any thing is kept apart; partition.

4. The part which is separated from the rest by dividing.

If we look into communities and divisions of men, we observe that the discreet man, not the wirty, guides the conversation. Addison.

5. Disunion; discord; difference. There was a division among the people, be

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