Lust. Used at this present only in an ill sense, not as ἐπιθυμία, but as ἐπιθυμία κακή (Col. iii. 5), and this mainly in one particular direction. ‘Lust’ had formerly no such limitations, nor has it now in German. The same holds good of the verb.
Of prikyng and of huntyng for the hare
Was al his lust, for no cost wolde he spare.
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, 192.
Through faith a man is purged of his sins, and obtaineth lust unto the law of God.—Tyndale, Prologue upon the Epistle to the Romans.
It was not because of the multitude of you above all nations that the Lord had lust unto you and chose you.—Deut. vii. 7. Coverdale.
My lust to devotion is little, my joy none at all.—Bishop Hall, Letters, Dec. 2, Ep. 1.
Thou mayest kill and eat flesh in all thy gates, whatsoever thy soul lusteth after.—Deut. xii. 15. (A.V.)
| Luxury, | } |
| Luxurious. |
‘Luxuria’ in classical Latin was very much what our ‘luxury’ is now. The meaning which in our earlier English was its only one, namely indulgence in sins of the flesh, it derived from the use of ‘luxuria’ in the medieval ethics, where it never means anything else but this. The weakening of the influence of the scholastic theology, joined to a more familiar acquaintance with classical Latinity, has probably caused its return to the classical meaning. In the definition given by Phillips (see below), we note the process of transition from its old meaning to its new, the old still remaining, but the new superinduced upon it.