Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A species or glossy silk fabric: a term more used in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries than now, and denoting generally plain solid silk, neither figured nor corded, nor having a satin surface.
  • noun See lustering.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A kind of glossy silk fabric. See lutestring.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A glossy silk fabric; lutestring.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

French lustrine, Italian lustrino, from lustrare to polish, Latin lustrare. See luster and compare lutestring.

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Examples

  • A suitable material was found in "lustring," a glossy silk cloth varnished with a solution of caoutchouc, and this being formed into a balloon only thirteen feet in diameter and fitted without other aperture than a stopcock, was after several attempts filled with hydrogen gas prepared in the usual way by the action of dilute sulphuric acid on scrap iron.

    The Dominion of the Air; the story of aerial navigation John Mackenzie Bacon 1875

  • Then we went to a mercer's at the end of Lombard Street, and there she bought a suit of Lutestring -- [More properly called "lustring"; a fine glossy silk.] -- for herself, and so home.

    Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete 1661 N.S. Samuel Pepys 1668

  • Then we went to a mercer's at the end of Lombard Street, and there she bought a suit of Lutestring -- [More properly called "lustring"; a fine glossy silk.] -- for herself, and so home.

    Diary of Samuel Pepys — Complete Samuel Pepys 1668

  • Then we went to a mercer's at the end of Lombard Street, and there she bought a suit of Lutestring ” [More properly called "lustring"; a fine glossy silk.] ” for herself, and so home.

    The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Jan/Feb/Mar 1660/61 Pepys, Samuel 1661

  • But here too she was not the innocent girl that 15 suggests: she was already engaged to debut as Cordelia at Drury Lane, and understood the codes of texture and color, lustring proving to be a favorite dress fabric.

    Framing Romantic Dress: Mary Robinson, Princess Caroline and the Sex/Text 2006

  • This attention to dress — the fine glossy silk of lustring fabric creating a delicate verdure that, in combination with dainty lilacs and a petticoat of lustrous tiffany all creating a "natural" lady, herself a pink bloom heightened through coloring — is signal because the ability of women's costuming to similarly aid in projecting identity and manage their own social plots was one Robinson, like

    Framing Romantic Dress: Mary Robinson, Princess Caroline and the Sex/Text 2006

  • Prevented by illness she married instead, and when Thomas insisted on a secretive wedding ceremony at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, she dressed as a Quaker (of dull brown, but of lustring nonetheless).

    Framing Romantic Dress: Mary Robinson, Princess Caroline and the Sex/Text 2006

  • So spring-like at past fifty, with herpalepink lustring, and back head Yet so peevish at girls!

    Sir Charles Grandison 2006

  • I got safe to my lodgings with this cargo, which was a piece of fine black lustring silk, and a piece of velvet; the latter was but part of a piece of about eleven yards; the former was a whole piece of near fifty yards.

    Moll Flanders 2003

  • But you must also get ready four sieves of fine lustring;

    Hung Lou Meng 2003

Comments

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  • Good insult's not woven of blustering

    And is more than a fustian cuss string.

    It's a tissue of terms

    First excreted by worms

    Then spun into fine silken lustring.

    September 11, 2014

  • Loving that fustian cuss string.

    September 11, 2014

  • Thank you, bilby. You are a true connoisseur.

    September 12, 2014