Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

lustrous

US/ˈlʌ.stɹəs/
adjectiveC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #12,013 of 15,258neutral

Lustrous means shining with a soft gleam. Lustrous hair, a lustrous pearl, lustrous silk.

The shine is soft and deep rather than hard and bright, which is why the word suits hair, pearls and silk and not metal or glass. In mineralogy the same quality is called lustre and is used to identify stones. Note lustre, the noun, from the Latin for light.

Definitions of lustrous

  1. 1adjectivelustrousShining with a soft gleam.C1

    “She brushed her long, lustrous hair until it shone.”

lustrous is a quality of shine.

Where it comes from

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *lewk-

  2. Middle French

    lustre

  3. English

    lustre

  4. English, today

    lustrous

From lustre + -ous. lustre comes from Middle French lustre. See luster (etymology 1).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

lustrous in the wild

  • The heartwood changes color after being cut and can be polished to a lustrous, glassy finish.

    Cocobolo

  • Beetling is a textile finishing process, where linen or cotton fabric is pounded to produce a flat, lustrous effect.

    Beetling

  • Catasetum atratum, the lustrous black catasetum, is a species of orchid found in Brazil.

    Catasetum atratum

  • Barbara fulgens, the lustrous spruce cone moth, is a moth of the family Tortricidae.

    Barbara fulgens

  • The crepe style S- and Z-twist weave makes the fabric springier and less lustrous than the closely related chiffon.

    Georgette (fabric)

1 / 2

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the lustre family

lustrouslustre

lustrous — used about once every 11,558 pages · #12,013 · point at the bar for the others