How to Use divine right in a Sentence

divine right

noun
  • He ruled by divine right.
  • My boss seems to think he has a divine right to order people around.
  • This isn’t the first gin to get the divine right seal of approval.
    — Jonah Flicker, Robb Report, 21 Feb. 2023
  • In centuries past, it was seen as granting the monarch the divine right to rule.
    — David Luhnow, wsj.com, 5 May 2023
  • She’s almost been raised with this divine right to run the world and make the choices of which way the world goes.
    — Jackie Strause, The Hollywood Reporter, 26 Apr. 2023
  • This reform should weaken the notion that agents have a divine right to 5% or more.
    — Chris Bryant | Bloomberg, Washington Post, 11 Oct. 2019
  • Charles was an ultra-royalist who believed in the divine right of kings.
    — Brian T. Allen, National Review, 11 Mar. 2020
  • But the tapestry suggests, too, that William won by divine right.
    — Washington Post, 18 Jan. 2018
  • To experience that freedom is our divine right.
    — Randal Craft, Christian Science Monitor, 25 Aug. 2025
  • Luckily, there's no mortal soul Meghan Markle can't charm — even those blessed by divine right.
    — Kathryn Lindsay, refinery29.com, 14 June 2018
  • Church and state are united in the person of the king or queen, some of whom have historically claimed to rule by divine right.
    — Laird Borrelli-Persson, Vogue, 9 Nov. 2022
  • But a lot of good teams have failed to qualify for the World Cup in the past, and nobody has got a divine right.
    — Jonathan Tannenwald, Philly.com, 6 Oct. 2017
  • His belief in the divine right of himself generated a civil war.
    — Patt Morrison, Los Angeles Times, 9 Sep. 2022
  • But right now, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child seizes the stage by divine right.
    — Abby Jones, Billboard, 23 Apr. 2018
  • In the Middle Ages, kings ruled by divine right and were supposed to be infallible rulers.
    — Paul Glover, Forbes, 10 Dec. 2021
  • Sorry, but there’s no divine right for North Carolina and Kentucky to win every year.
    — Dan Wolken, USA TODAY, 25 Mar. 2023
  • Considered the most sacred part of the coronation, the anointing asserts the sovereign’s divine right to rule.
    — Meilan Solly, Smithsonian Magazine, 2 May 2023
  • The amorphous, intangible potency of being granted divine right to rule became just a divine right to … be the queen.
    — Vulture, 8 Sep. 2022
  • Doing so was his divine right as both sovereign and catalyst, a ritual that would have strengthened his connection to the kinetic.
    — Maureen Lee Lenker, EW.com, 7 Sep. 2023
  • The Shakespearean classic portrays the clash between divine right and pragmatic governance.
    — Naman Ramachandran, Variety, 21 June 2024
  • Those who believe in the divine right of kings will see a youth with royal blood running through him that is older even than England itself, that can be traced all the way back to the regal Ashanti.
    — Zadie Smith, The New Yorker, 2 July 2019
  • Mesopotamian kingship was conceived as being descended from heaven, an ancient precursor to what would become, a few thousand years on, a corrosive doctrine of the divine right of kings.
    — Los Angeles Times, 5 Aug. 2021
  • America’s social contract was that liberty and self-determination was a more powerful engine of human freedom than vassalage and the divine right of kings.
    — TIME, 9 Jan. 2024
  • Since this portion of the coronation symbolizes the monarch's divine right to the throne, it's typically done away from the public—and, of course, the millions of viewers watching on live television at home.
    — Kelsey Mulvey, House Beautiful, 7 May 2023
  • But absolutist claims of divine right to territory appear impossible to reconcile.
    — Roger Cohen, New York Times, 20 Nov. 2023
  • Many groups formed hierarchical class systems and were ruled by powerful leaders who claimed supernatural powers—not unlike kings who ruled by divine right in Europe.
    — Kathleen Duval, The Atlantic, 2 Apr. 2024
  • Rather, Khomeini’s new constitution institutionalized the concept of velayat-e faqih, the divine right of the clergy to rule.
    — Ervand Abrahamian, Foreign Affairs, 18 Apr. 2016
  • She is identified as both ritual priestess and triumphant ruler in a monument that enshrines her elite status and a belief in the divine right to rule that would shape her role and image in the late classic Mayan period.
    — Mary Tompkins Lewis, WSJ, 25 Feb. 2022
  • The reason for that, Field suggests, is that there’s something about the exalted nature of this music that leads the people who live everyday within its heady majesty to feel as if pleasure, in every realm, is their divine right.
    — Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 1 Sep. 2022
  • Powerful rulers led many of these civilizations, combining political and religious power, much as monarchs of Europe in later centuries would claim a divine right to rule.
    — The Editors, JSTOR Daily, 21 Nov. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'divine right.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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