morning star
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.95 in modern English
14
Scrabble Score
11
Letters
3
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A weapon consisting of a heavy ball set with spikes attached rigidly to a staff, in contrast to a flail.
Countable
name
Alternative letter-case form of morning star (“Venus, as seen in the eastern sky around dawn”).
name
The title of any of several newspapers.
Example Sentences
- "Near-synonyms: evening star, Hesperus"
- "The evening star is the morning star. (Hesperus is Phosphorus.)"
- "Morn in the white wake of the morning star / Came furrowing all the orient into gold."
- "1979, Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher, “The Rainbow Connection”, The Muppet Movie, Henson Associates and ITC Entertainment Who said that every wish would be heard and answered / When wished on the morning star? / Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it / And look what it's done so far."
- "Near-synonyms: evening star, Hermes"
- "Contrivances like these, except that the balls were armed with spikes, were long carried by the pioneers of the trained bands, or city militia, they are generally called morning stars."
Etymology
From morning + star. Compare Middle English morwensterre, West Frisian moarnsstjer, Dutch morgenster, German Morgenstern, Swedish morgonstjärna, Icelandic morgunstjarna. Application to Satan derives, like the corresponding sense of Lucifer (which see), from what is probably a misinterpretation of Isaiah 14:12 (NIV: "How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!").