Definition of "luster"

luster¹

/ˈlʌstɚ/

noun
countable and uncountable, plural lusters
1. The ability or condition of shining when light is applied, inclusive of shine, sheen, polish, gloss, sparkle, etc.
  Quotations
  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.Indianapolis: Hackett, 2006, p. 162
  1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto XI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie
  First Servant: O, I am slain! My lord, you have one eye leftTo 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.
  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, [Act III, scene vii]
  […] abashed the devil stood,And felt how awful goodness is, and sawVirtue in her shape how lovely, saw, and pinedHis loss; but chiefly to find here observedHis lustre visibly impaired; yet seemedUndaunted. […]
  1667, John Milton, “Book IV”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […]; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, lines 846-850
  The scorching sun was mounted high, / In all its lustre, to the noonday sky.
  1717, Joseph Addison, Metamorphoses Book III, The Story of Cadmus
  Daughters of Beulah! Muses who inspire the Poet’s Song!Record the journey of immortal Milton through your realmsOf terror & mild moony lustre, in soft sexual delusionsOf varied beauty, to delight the wanderer and reposeHis burning thirst & freezing hunger! […]
  1810, William Blake, Milton: A Poem in Two Books, Book I, 1-5
  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.
  1914 June, James Joyce, “The Dead”, in Dubliners, London: Grant Richards
  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.
  1922, E. R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros, Chapter VIII,‎
  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.
  2001, James Wood, Introduction to Saul Bellow, Collected Stories, New York: Viking, p. xvii
2. (figurative) Shining light, luminosity, brightness, shine.
3. (figurative) Shining beauty, splendor, attractiveness or attraction.
  Quotations
  When Autumn's yellow lustre gilds the world...
  1730, James Thomson, “Autumn”, in Seasons, section 186
  Their days of rest are wrested from them, their feasts are fasts, their lot is dust instead of luster.
  1970, S.Y. Agnon, "Agunot" in Twenty-One Stories, New York: Schocken Books, p. 30
  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.
  1971, Cynthia Ozick, “The Butterfly and the Traffic Light”, in Collected Stories, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, published 2006, page 288
4. (figurative) Shining fame, renown, glory.
  Quotations
  Thus err the many, who, entranced to findUnwonted lustre in some clearer mind,Believe that Genius sets the laws at naughtWhich chain the pinions of our wildest thought;
  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
  […] 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 […] ".
  1895, The Gentleman's Magazine, volume 279, page 602
  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.
  2006, Florence Tamagne, A History of Homosexuality in Europe, Volume I & II: Berlin, London, Paris, 1919-1939, New York: Algora, page 87
  Where else then, Denmark? Its misgivings about immigration have smudged some of the liberal lustre it once had.
  2023 February 11, Janan Ganesh, “After Germany's fall, which is the paragon nation?”, in FT Weekend, page 22
5. (figurative) Polish, social refinement.
6. A thing exhibiting luster, particularly
  1. (literary) Any shining body or thing.
  2. A piece of glass added to a light (especially a chandelier) to increase its luster.
    Quotations
    Each mortal has his pleasure: none denyScarsdale his bottle, Darty his ham-pie;Ridotta sips and dances, till she seeThe doubling lustres dance as fast as she;
    1735, Alexander Pope, The First Satire of the Second Book of Horace Imitated, 45-48
  3. An ornamental light providing luster, especially a chandelier.
    Quotations
    The immense room was carpeted, the walls were covered with eighteenth-century panelling, and three electric lustres hung from the ceiling.
    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
  4. A substance that imparts luster to a surface, inclusive of polish, gloss, plumbago, glaze, etc.
    Quotations
    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 […]
    2009, Yuka Kadoi, Islamic Chinoiserie: The Art of Mongol Iran, Edinburgh University Press, page 52
  5. The layer of an object that imparts luster, chiefly with regard to ceramics.
  6. Clipping of lusterware: highly lustrous ceramics.
    Quotations
    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.
    1936, Freya Stark, chapter XXIII, in The Southern Gates of Arabia: A Journey in the Hadhramaut, Boston: E.P. Dutton, page 253
  7. A kind of lustrous fabric with a wool weft and cotton, linen, or silk warp, chiefly used for women's dresses.
    Quotations
    Mrs. McLash was dressed for travelling. She wore a black lustre skirt that just exposed her broken button-boots […]
    1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter IX, in Capricornia‎, New York: D. Appleton-Century, published 1943, page 143
  8. (obsolete) A glory, an act or thing that imparts fame or renown.
verb
third-person singular simple present lusters, present participle lustering, simple past and past participle lustered
1. (intransitive, now rare) To have luster, to gleam, to shine.
  Quotations
  What bloom, what brightness lusters o'er her cheeks!
  1729, Richard Savage, The Wanderer, Sect. iii, l. 326
2. (intransitive, now rare) To gain luster, to become lustrous.
3. (transitive) To give luster, particularly
  1. (obsolete) To make illustrious or attractive, to distinguish.
    Quotations
    Our Puritans have from hence learned to colour and lustre their ugly Treasons... with the cloake of Religion.
    1644, John Maxwell, Sacro-Sancta Regum Majestas, page 17
  2. To coat with a lustrous material or glaze, to impart physical luster to an object.
    Quotations
    Peter and Mania found a pensione whose view was of chestnut woods and a horizon looped by peaks lustred with last winter's snow, distant in time as well as space.
    1985, Nadine Gordimer, “Sins of the Third Age”, in Something Out There, Penguin, page 69
4. (transitive, obsolete) To shed light on, to illustrate, to show.
5. (transitive, obsolete) Synonym of lustrate, particularly
  1. Synonym of purify, to ritually cleanse or renew.
  2. Synonym of look, to look over, to survey.

luster²

/ˈlʌstɚ/

noun
plural lusters
1. (historical) in Roman contexts.
  Quotations
  ...thritty yere of vj. lustres...
  1387, Ranulph Higden, translated by John de Trevisa, Polychronicon, volume VIII, page 29
  Mesue and some other Arabians began to reject and reprehend it; upon whose authority, for many following lusters, it was much debased and quite out of request […].
  1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Printed by John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, partition II, section 4, member 2, subsection ii

luster³

/ˈlʌstɚ/

noun
plural lusters
1. (now rare) One who lusts, one inflamed with lust.
  Quotations
  Eumenides But did neuer any Louers come hether?Geron Lusters, but not Louers.
  1591, John Lyly, Endimion, sig. E4v
  ...a luster after power...
  1847, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, volume III, page 124
  Neither fornicators, nor those who serve idols, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor the lusters after mankind […] shall obtain the kingdom of God.
  1867-1872, Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Testimonies against the Jews

luster⁴

/ˈlʌstɚ/

noun
plural lusters
1. (obsolete) Synonym of den: a dwelling-place in a wilderness, especially for animals.
  Quotations
  ...But, turning to his luster, Calues and Dam, He shewes abhorr'd death, in his angers flame...
  c. 1615, Homer, translated by George Chapman, Odysses, 2nd edition, page 159

Definition of "luster"

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luster2

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