luster
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈlʌstɚ/
rhymes: -ʌstə(ɹ)
Forms: form: lusters
form: lustre
Etymology: From Middle French lustre, from Old Italian lustro, from Old Italian lustrare (“brighten”), from Latin lūstrō (“to purify, to brighten”), from Latin lūstrum (“purification ritual”).
Senses: examples: text: metallic luster
text: pearly luster
text: the diamond’s luster
text: And over all the fields themselves did muster,
With bils and glayves making a dreadfull luster;
That forst at first those knights backe to retyre:
As when the wrathfull Boreas doth bluster,
Nought may abide the tempest of his yre,
Both man and beast doe fly, and succour doe inquyre.
ref: 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto XI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
text: First Servant: O, I am slain! My lord, you have one eye left
To see some mischief on him. O! [Dies]
Cornwall: Lest it see more, prevent it. Out, vile jelly!
Where is thy lustre now?
Gloucester: All dark and comfortless.
ref: c. 1603–1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene vii]:
text: Daughters of Beulah! Muses who inspire the Poet’s Song!
Record the journey of immortal Milton through your realms
Of terror & mild moony lustre, in soft sexual delusions
Of varied beauty, to delight the wanderer and repose
His burning thirst & freezing hunger! […]
ref: 1810, William Blake, Milton: A Poem in Two Books, Book I, 1-5:
text: The canopy above the bed was a mosaic of tiny stones, jet, serpentine, dark hyacinth, black marble, bloodstone, and lapis lazuli, so confounded in a maze of altering hue and lustre that they might mock the palpitating sky of night.
ref: 1922, E[ric] R[ücker] Eddison, chapter 8, in The Worm Ouroboros: A Romance, London: Jonathan Cape […], →OCLC:
text: 2001, James Wood, Introduction to Saul Bellow, Collected Stories, New York: Viking, p. xvii,
Curiously enough, the stream of consciousness, for all its reputation as the great accelerator of description, actually slows down realism, asks it to dawdle over tiny remembrances, tiny details and lusters, to circle and return.
glosses: The ability or condition of shining with reflected light; sheen, gleam, gloss, sparkle, shine, etc.
examples: text: By the luster or glance of a mineral is meant the quantity and quality of light reflected by it, as determined by the character or minute structure of its surface. […] The two principal kinds of luster are the metallic and non-metallic. […] The adamantine luster is intermediate between the metallic and non-metallic lusters. […] The vitreous is the luster of glass, and of all minerals similar to glass in appearance, such as quartz, calcite, etc. The resinous luster is seen in resins, of which the native mineral copalite is an example; it is also well exhibited in sulphur and sphalerite. The pearly luster, i.e., the luster of pearl, is well shown only in minerals having a foliated or scaly structure, in other words, very perfect cleavage in one direction, such as talc, mica, and gypsum. The silky or satiny luster, like the pearly, is determined by the structure, being observed only in finely fibrous minerals. […] The greasy and waxy lusters are most common in certain amorphous minerals, such as serpentine.
ref: 1895, William Otis Crosby, Tables for the Determination of Common Minerals Chiefly by Their Physical Properties: With Confirmatory Chemical Tests, page 11:
topics: geography
geology
natural-sciences
glosses: The ability or condition of shining with reflected light; sheen, gleam, gloss, sparkle, shine, etc.
The way in which the surface of any particular type of mineral reflects light differently from other minerals, which is helpful in telling minerals apart.
examples: text: the sun’s luster
text: the luster of the minor stars
text: […] abashed the devil stood,
And felt how awful goodness is, and saw
Virtue in her shape how lovely, saw, and pined
His loss; but chiefly to find here observed
His lustre visibly impaired; yet seemed
Undaunted. […]
ref: 1667, John Milton, “Book IV”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC, lines 846-850:
text: 1717, Joseph Addison, Metamorphoses Book III, The Story of Cadmus, http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10587/pg10587-images.html
The scorching sun was mounted high, / In all its lustre, to the noonday sky.
glosses: Shining light from within, luminosity, brightness, shine.
examples: text: How does the Luſtre of our Father’s Actions,
Through the dark Cloud of Ills that cover him,
Break out, and burn with more triumphant Brightneſs!
ref: 1712 (date written), [Joseph] Addison, Cato, a Tragedy. […], London: […] J[acob] Tonson, […], published 1713, →OCLC, Act I, scene i, page 2:
text: After so many years in the same field, the job had lost its luster.
text: When Autumn's yellow lustre gilds the world...
ref: 1730, James Thomson, “Autumn”, in Seasons, section 186:
text: Thus err the many, who, entranced to find
Unwonted lustre in some clearer mind,
Believe that Genius sets the laws at naught
Which chain the pinions of our wildest thought;
ref: 1836, Oliver Wendell Holmes, “Poetry: A Metrical Essay”, in The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes in Two Volumes: Volume I, Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin, published 1892, page 37:
text: 1970, S.Y. Agnon, "Agunot" in Twenty-One Stories, New York: Schocken Books, p. 30,
Their days of rest are wrested from them, their feasts are fasts, their lot is dust instead of luster.
glosses: Shining beauty, splendor, attractiveness or attraction.
examples: text: After the scandal, the idol lost his luster and could only get work in Vegas.
text: […] whose ancestors, says Clarendon, had been transported out of Normandy with the Conqueror, "and had continued," says Sir Henry Wotton, "about the space of four hundred years, rather without obscurity than with any great lustre […]".
ref: 1895, The Gentleman's Magazine, volume 279, page 602:
text: But Main, High, and Central have no past; rather, their past is now. It is not the fault of the inhabitants that nothing has gone before them. Nor are they to be condemned if they make their spinal streets conspicuous, and confer egregious lustre and false acclaim on Central, High, or Main, and erect minarets and marquees indeed as though their city were already in dream and fable.
ref: 1971, Cynthia Ozick, “The Butterfly and the Traffic Light”, in Collected Stories, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, published 2006, page 288:
text: The notion of two homosexuals living together more or less openly did not sit well with their neighbors, or even their friends, but Millthorpe took on a kind of symbolic luster as a kind of homosexual paradise.
ref: 2006, Florence Tamagne, A History of Homosexuality in Europe, Volume I & II: Berlin, London, Paris, 1919-1939, New York: Algora, page 87:
text: Where else then, Denmark? Its misgivings about immigration have smudged some of the liberal lustre it once had.
ref: 2023 February 11, Janan Ganesh, “After Germany's fall, which is the paragon nation?”, in FT Weekend, page 22:
glosses: Shining fame, renown, glory.
examples: text: Sure, the posh git spoke with fine lustre. ’S all a load of bollocks, though, innit?
glosses: Polish, social refinement.
glosses: A thing exhibiting luster, particularly
Any shining body or thing.
examples: text: Each mortal has his pleasure: none deny
Scarsdale his bottle, Darty his ham-pie;
Ridotta sips and dances, till she see
The doubling lustres dance as fast as she;
ref: 1735, Alexander Pope, The First Satire of the Second Book of Horace Imitated, 45-48:
glosses: A thing exhibiting luster, particularly
A piece of glass added to a light (especially a chandelier) to increase its luster.
examples: text: The immense room was carpeted, the walls were covered with eighteenth-century panelling, and three electric lustres hung from the ceiling.
ref: 1905, Thomas Mann, “The Blood of the Walsungs”, in H.T. Lowe-Porter, transl., Death in Venice & Seven Other Stories, New York: Vintage, published 1954, page 294:
glosses: A thing exhibiting luster, particularly
An ornamental light providing luster, especially a chandelier.
examples: text: Gabriel coloured as if he felt he had made a mistake and, without looking at her, kicked off his goloshes and flicked actively with his muffler at his patent-leather shoes. […] When he had flicked lustre into his shoes he stood up and pulled his waistcoat down more tightly on his plump body.
ref: 1904–1907 (date written), James Joyce, “The Dead”, in Dubliners, London: Grant Richards, published June 1914, →OCLC, pages 219–220:
text: Chinese themes are equally recognisable in the star-shaped and hexagonal tiles with either moulded relief or lustre-painted decoration, sometimes surrounded by an inscription border […]
ref: 2009, Yuka Kadoi, Islamic Chinoiserie: The Art of Mongol Iran, Edinburgh University Press, page 52:
glosses: A thing exhibiting luster, particularly
A substance that imparts luster to a surface, such as polish, gloss, plumbago, glaze, etc.
glosses: A thing exhibiting luster, particularly
The layer of an object that imparts luster, chiefly with regard to ceramics.
examples: text: The whole place was covered with fragments of pottery, mostly very rough, and difficult to identify as to date. Two small lustre shards belong to the ninth or tenth century and a green glaze resembles the output of the kilns found by Sir Aurel Stein on the coast of Makran.
ref: 1936, Freya Stark, chapter XXIII, in The Southern Gates of Arabia: A Journey in the Hadhramaut, Boston: E.P. Dutton, page 253:
glosses: A thing exhibiting luster, particularly
Clipping of lusterware: highly lustrous ceramics.
examples: text: Mrs. McLash was dressed for travelling. She wore a black lustre skirt that just exposed her broken button-boots […]
ref: 1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter IX, in Capricornia, New York: D. Appleton-Century, published 1943, page 143:
glosses: A thing exhibiting luster, particularly
A kind of lustrous fabric with a wool weft and cotton, linen, or silk warp, chiefly used for women's dresses.
glosses: A thing exhibiting luster, particularly
A glory, an act or thing that imparts fame or renown.
Derived terms: deluster
lackluster
luster bowl
luster china
luster fabric
luster fleece
lusterful
luster goods
luster jug
lusterless
lustermaker
lusterment
luster mottling
luster mug
luster process
luster teapot
luster tile
luster trade
lusterware
luster wool
lustery
lustrify
lustrious
lustriously
lustriousness
lustrous
Related terms: illustrate
illustration
illustrious
lustral
lustrate
lustration
lustrical
lustrific
lustrification
lustrine
lustrum
perlustrate