English

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Etymology

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From lustre +‎ -ous.

Adjective

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lustrous (comparative more lustrous, superlative most lustrous)

  1. Having a glow or lustre.
    • c. 1601–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Twelfe Night, or What You Will”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies [] (First Folio), London: [] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene ii]:
      Why it hath bay windows transparent as barricadoes, and the clearstores toward the south north are as lustrous as ebony; and yet complainest thou of obstruction?
    • 1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], “An Evening Alone”, in Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. [], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, [], →OCLC, page 304:
      There was not a cloud on the sky, save a few light vapours that congregated near the moon; but even they were lustrous with her presence.
    • 1892, Walt Whitman, "Gods" in Leaves of Grass (abridged reprint of the 1892 edition), New York: The Modern Library, 1921, p. 232, [1]
      Or Time and Space,
      Or shape of Earth divine and wondrous,
      Or some fair shape I viewing, worship,
      Or lustrous orb of sun or star by night,
      Be ye my Gods.
    • 1924, Herman Melville, chapter 1, in Billy Budd[2], London: Constable & Co.:
      It was a hot noon in July; and his face, lustrous with perspiration, beamed with barbaric good humor.
    • 1936, Wallace Stevens, “Meditation Celestial & Terrestrial”, in The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, published 1971, page 123:
      The wild warblers are warbling in the jungle
      Of life and spring and of the lustrous inundations,
      Flood on flood, of our returning sun.
    • 2000, Philip Pullman, chapter 1, in The Amber Spyglass, Random House Children's Books, published 2001:
      The sunlight lay heavy and rich on his lustrous golden fur, and his monkey hands turned a pine cone this way and that, snapping off the scales with sharp fingers and scratching out the sweet nuts.
  2. As if shining with a brilliant light; radiant.

Translations

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