divertise

From French divertir, present participle divertissant.

divertise (third-person singular simple present divertises, present participle divertising, simple past and past participle divertised)

1. (obsolete, ambitransitive) to entertain, to cheer up.
   • 1695, C[harles] A[lphonse] du Fresnoy, translated by John Dryden, De Arte Graphica. The Art of Painting, […], London: […] J[ohn] Heptinstall for W. Rogers, […], →OCLC:

     let them instruct, let them divertise, and let them move us

   • 1812, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Omniana:

     Matré Clark, to divertise you, I vill tell you, how I did get be acquainted vid dis Bedlam Matré.

   • 1820, Charles Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer:

     company to divertise my cousin in his loneliness (iii)

• “divertise”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

• revisited

divertise

1. first/third-person singular imperfect subjunctive of divertir