LUSTROUS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does lustrous mean? 

• LUSTROUS (adjective)
  The adjective LUSTROUS has 3 senses:

1. made smooth and bright by or as if by rubbing; reflecting a sheen or glow

2. brilliant

3. reflecting light

  Familiarity information: LUSTROUS used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• LUSTROUS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Made smooth and bright by or as if by rubbing; reflecting a sheen or glow

Synonyms:

bright; burnished; lustrous; shining; shiny

Context example:

shiny black patents

Similar:

polished (perfected or made shiny and smooth)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Brilliant

Context example:

lustrous actors of the time

Similar:

glorious (having or deserving or conferring glory)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Reflecting light

Synonyms:

glistening; glossy; lustrous; sheeny; shining; shiny

Context example:

shining white enamel

Similar:

bright (emitting or reflecting light readily or in large amounts)

Derivation:

lustre (the visual property of something that shines with reflected light)

 Context examples 

Presently the chambers gave up their fair tenants one after another: each came out gaily and airily, with dress that gleamed lustrous through the dusk.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

It was not a photograph but an ivory miniature, and the artist had brought out the full effect of the lustrous black hair, the large dark eyes, and the exquisite mouth.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The eyes were large and brown and lustrous, the mouth sweet and sensitive, and the face itself a delicate oval, though sun and exposure to briny wind had burnt the face scarlet.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Finally one of them, an elderly man, with a necklace and bracelet of great lustrous glass beads and the skin of some beautiful mottled amber-colored animal slung over his shoulders, ran forward and embraced most tenderly the youth whom we had saved.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I drew them large; I shaped them well: the eyelashes I traced long and sombre; the irids lustrous and large.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Even now, as I commence my task, his full-toned voice swells in my ears; his lustrous eyes dwell on me with all their melancholy sweetness; I see his thin hand raised in animation, while the lineaments of his face are irradiated by the soul within.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

While arranging my hair, I looked at my face in the glass, and felt it was no longer plain: there was hope in its aspect and life in its colour; and my eyes seemed as if they had beheld the fount of fruition, and borrowed beams from the lustrous ripple.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)