different between glistening vs lustrous

English

Verb

glistening

1. present participle of glisten

Noun

glistening (plural glistenings)

1. The appearance of something that glistens.
2. (optics) A fluid-filled microvacuole within a lens.

English

Etymology

lustre +? -ous

Adjective

lustrous (comparative more lustrous, superlative most lustrous)

1. Having a glow or lustre.
   • 1599, William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Act IV, Scene 2, [1]

     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?

   • 1892, Walt Whitman, "Gods" in Leaves of Grass (abridged reprint of the 1892 edition), New York: The Modern Library, 1921, p. 232, [2]

     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, Billy Budd, London: Constable & Co., Chapter 1,^[3]

     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, 1971, p. 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, The Amber Spyglass, Random House Children's Books, 2001, Chapter 1,^[4]

     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