Diviners

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Individuals who use specialized techniques to gain foresight or insight into future happenings or hidden realities
2. Persons who interpret signs or symbols to reveal future outcomes or secret information
3. Those who employ various methods to foresee events or uncover concealed truths

Etymology: "Diviners" is the plural of "diviner," a noun for someone who foretells the future or uncovers hidden knowledge. The Latin ancestor, "dīvīnātor," meant a foreteller or soothsayer, and it grew from the verb "dīvīnāre," "to foresee." That verb is the root of the English word "divine," so a diviner is in one sense someone who does the divine's work of seeing ahead. The English form came through Middle English "divinour," which shows the older spelling and an earlier stress that the modern word lost. English also has "divinator," a doublet of the same Latin source that entered the language by a more direct, learned route. The two forms ended up as near-twins with the same ancestry but slightly different histories.

Synonyms: soothsayers, fortune tellers, prophets, seers, oracles