[ad. L. lūstrātiōn-em, n. of action f. lūstrāre LUSTRATE v.1]
1. The action of lustrating; the performance of an expiatory sacrifice or a purificatory rite (e.g., by washing with water); the purification by religious rites (of a person or place from something).
1614. Raleigh, Hist. World, II. V. vi. § 3. 621. A Muster, and ceremonious lustration of the Armie, was wont to be made at certeine times with great solemnitie.
1635. A. Stafford, Fem. Glory (1869), 118. The Lustration of houses was yearely usuall with the Romans, in the Moneth of February.
1699. Bentley, Phal., 380. The Lustrations of Cities and Countries from Plagues, Earthquakes, Prodigies.
1715. Pope, Iliad, I. 411. The host to expiate, next the king prepares, With pure lustrations, and with solemn prayers.
1768–74. Tucker, Lt. Nat. (1834), II. 414. Signatures of the cross, and lustrations by holy water.
1862. Merivale, Rom. Emp. (1865), VI. l. 183. Enjoining the lustration of the city by solemn sacrifices.
1875. Lightfoot, Comm. Col., 171. There were other points of ceremonial observance, in which the Essenes superadded to the law. Of these the most remarkable was their practice of constant lustrations.
1883. Encycl. Brit., XV. 70/1. In Rome … there was a lustration of the fleet before it sailed, and of the army before it marched.
b. gen. Washing. Chiefly jocular.
1825–9. Mrs. Sherwood, Lady of Manor, III. xix. 82. The little girl … now too evidently bore the symptoms of long neglect, and Mrs. Cicely’s plans of lustration were, therefore, the more needful.
1829. [J. L. Knapp], Jrnl. Naturalist, 321–2. Birds are unceasingly attentive to neatness and lustration of their plumage.
1887. Lowell, Old Eng. Dram. (1892), 78. The other never paid his washer-woman for the lustration of the legendary single shirt without which [etc.].
2. fig. Purification, esp. spiritual or moral.
1655. [Glapthorne], Lady Mother, V. i. in Bullen, O. Pl., II. 185. You may live To make a faire lustration for your faults And die a happie Convert.
1684. trans. Bonet’s Merc. Compit., VI. 179. The … excrementitious matter is separated by this inward lustration from the bloud.
1777. Earl Chatham, Sp. on Addr., 18 Nov. Let them [the prelates] perform a lustration; let them purify … this country, from this sin.
1882. Farrar, Early Chr., I. 140. St. Peter’s mind is full of the Deluge as a type of the world’s lustration.
1887. Lowell, Democr., 166. The lustration of the two vulgar Laises by the pure imagination of Don Quixote.
3. The action of going round a place, viewing, or surveying it; the review (of an army).
1614. [see 1].
1623. Cockeram, Lustration, a viewing, compassing.
1656. Blount, Glossogr., Lustration, compassing, viewing or going about on every side.
1752. Young, Brothers, I. i. (1777), 7. ’Tis their great day, supreme of all their year, The fam’d lustration of their martial powers.
1849. Jeffrey, in Cockburn, Life Jeffrey (1852), I. 405. I have made a last lustration of all my walks and haunts, and taken a long farewell of garden, and terrace, and flowers.
† 4. A perambulation, inspection, census. Obs.
1646. Sir T. Browne, Pseud. Ep., VII. xi. 360. How deepely hereby God was defrauded in the time of David,… will easily appeare by the summes of former lustrations.
5. = LUSTRE sb.2 rare–1.
1853. F. W. Newman, Odes of Horace, II. iv. One whose age runs fast to finish Its eighth lustration.
