The Collaborative International Dictionary
Destiny \Des"ti*ny\, n.; pl. Destinies. [OE. destinee, destene, F. destin['e]e, from destiner. See Destine.]
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That to which any person or thing is destined; predetermined state; condition foreordained by the Divine or by human will; fate; lot; doom.
Thither he Will come to know his destiny.
--Shak.No man of woman born, Coward or brave, can shun his destiny.
--Bryant. -
The fixed order of things; invincible necessity; fate; a resistless power or agency conceived of as determining the future, whether in general or of an individual.
But who can turn the stream of destiny?
--Spenser.Fame comes only when deserved, and then is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny.
--Longfellow.The Destinies (Anc. Myth.), the three Parc[ae], or Fates; the supposed powers which preside over human life, and determine its circumstances and duration.
Marked by the Destinies to be avoided.
--Shak.
Usage examples of "the destinies".
I had stopped pretending to science and had admitted sorcery, I had told Mardikian the true truth, and now no more would I go to City Hall and sit among the mighty, and no longer would I shape and guide the destinies of the charismatic Paul Quinn, and when he took the oath of office in Washington come January five years hence I would watch the scene on television from afar, the forgotten man, the shunned man, the leper of the administration.
What was the life of a foreign vagabond beside the destinies of Holland which an avenging God would help to settle today?
He belonged to that central and most sensitive organ of the entire Game organization, that anonymous group of players of proven worth in whose hands lay the destinies of the Game at any given time, or at least the type of play that happened to be in fashion.
And now this trading company, with its tradition of gain, found itself dealing not merely in spices and dyes and tea and jewels, but in the revenues and territories of princes and the destinies of India.
In that struggle, the Destinies I had seen might be sent against each other before it was time, and the universe be shaken apart in that meeting.
With this sum, if the king had shut the isthmus of Suez by a strong wall, like that of China, the destinies of Egypt might have been entirely changed.