(stress even or variable) a. and sb. [f. LACK v.1 + LUSTRE.]
A. adj. Wanting in luster or brightness: orig. of the eyes, countenance, etc., after Shakespeare.
1600. Shaks., A. Y. L., II. vii. 21. He drew a diall from his poake: And looking on it, with lacke-lustre eye, Sayes [etc.].
1782. V. Knox, Ess. (1819), III. clxxii. 257. With hollow and lack-lustre eye.
1812. Byron, Ch. Har., II. vi. Through each lack-lustre, eyeless hole.
1840. The Vedette, I. No. 19, 18 July, 76/1. Their principles are not embodied in log cabins, cider barrels, coon skins, and skunk skins; nor yet in the ‘lack-luster eye’ of dead wood-chucks, glaring from the crevices of a log cabin.
1844. Dickens, Mart. Chuz., iii. From a gaudy blue to a faint lack-lustre shade of grey.
1883. Black, Shandon Bells, xxxi. Existence in these foul-smelling lanes … seemed a lack-lustre kind of thing.
B. sb. The absence of luster or brightness. rare–1.
a. 1788. Pott, Chirurg. Wks., II. 92. The eyes have now a languor and a glassiness, a lack-lustre not easy to be described.
1847. in Craig; and in mod. Dicts.
Hence Lacklustrous a., wanting in luster, dull.
1834. New Monthly Mag., XL. 8. The most lacklustrous of all games.
