morning star
[Cf. the earlier morn-star.]
1. The planet Venus when visible in the east before sunrise; = Lucifer 1. Also gen. a star or planet that is visible in the morning.
| 1535 Coverdale Job xxxviii. 7. 1590 Spenser F.Q. i. xii. 21 As bright as doth the morning starre appeare Out of the East. 1630 Milton On May Morning 1 Now the bright morning Star, Dayes harbinger, Comes dancing from the East. 1812 Woodhouse Astron. xxiii. 249 Perceive Venus rising just before the Sun, and becoming the Morning Star. |
b. fig. Applied (after Rev. xxii. 16) to Christ; also, to any person who is regarded as the precursor of a figurative ‘dawn’.
| 1567 Gude & Godlie B. (S.T.S.) 145 He [Christ] is the Morning Star. 1671 Milton P.R. i. 694 So spake our Morning Star then in his rise. 1720 J. Hughes Siege Damascus iii. (1777) 38 The great Mahomet, Arabia's morning-star. 1732 Neal Hist. Purit. I. 3 John Wickliffe, the morning star of the Reformation. 1818 Byron Giaour 1130 She..rose, where'er I turn'd mine eye, The Morning-star of Memory! 1833 Tennyson Dream Fair Women i, ‘The Legend of Good Women’, long ago Sung by the morning star of song, who made His music heard below. |
2. Antiq. = morgenstern.
| 1684 J. Peter tr. Siege Vienna 87 Our Men being provided with..Hooks and Clubs headed with Iron, Morning Stars and the like Instruments. 1868 Archæol. Jrnl. XXV. 85 The acquisition by the Royal Artillery Museum..of some specimens of ‘Morning Stars’. 1871 B. Taylor Faust (1875) II. iv. iii. 259 There hangs a morning-star so strong, The like of which I've wanted long. |
3. dial. = star-of-Bethlehem.
| 1890 Nature Notes I. 23 (Hampshire), Morning-star..Ornithogalum umbellatum. |