luster

Etymology 1

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”)

noun

1. The ability or condition of shining when light is applied, inclusive of shine, sheen, polish, gloss, sparkle, etc.
   metallic luster... pearly luster... the diamond's luster...
   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.
   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! […] 1810, William Blake, Milton: A Poem in Two Books, Book I, 1-5
   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,
   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.
2. (figurative) Shining light, luminosity, brightness, shine.
   the sun's luster... the luster of the minor stars...
3. (figurative) Shining beauty, splendor, attractiveness or attraction.
   After so many years in the same field, the job had lost its luster.
   When Autumn's yellow lustre gilds the world... 1730, James Thomson, “Autumn”, in Seasons, section 186
   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.
   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.
   After the scandal, the idol lost his luster and could only get work in Vegas.
   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; 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. 2023-02-11, Janan Ganesh, “After Germany's fall, which is the paragon nation?”, in FT Weekend, page 22
5. (figurative) Polish, social refinement.
   Sure, the posh git spoke with fine lustre. 'S all a load of bollocks, though, innit?
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.
      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; 1735, Alexander Pope, The First Satire of the Second Book of Horace Imitated, 45-48
   3. An ornamental light providing luster, especially a chandelier.
      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.
      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.
      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.
      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

1. (intransitive, now rare) To have luster, to gleam, to shine.
   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.
      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.
      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.

Etymology 2

From Middle English lustre, from Latin lustrum, from Old Latin *loustrom, of uncertain origin. More at lustrum.

noun

1. Alternative form of lustrum: A five-year period, especially (historical) in Roman contexts.
   ...thritty yere of vj. lustres... 1387, Ranulph Higden, translated by John de Trevisa, Polychronicon, volume VIII, page 29

Etymology 3

From lust + -er.

noun

1. (now rare) One who lusts, one inflamed with lust.
   Eumenides But did neuer any Louers come hether? 1591, John Lyly, Endimion, sig. E4v
   ...a luster after power... 1847, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, volume III, page 124
   1867-1872, Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Testimonies against the Jews Neither fornicators, nor those who serve idols, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor the lusters after mankind […] shall obtain the kingdom of God.

Etymology 4

From Latin lustra (“wilds, woods”).

noun

1. (obsolete) Synonym of den: a dwelling-place in a wilderness, especially for animals.
   ...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