Lū'ci-fer, n.

n. [Lat., light-bringing, the morning star, from lux, lucis, light, and ferre, to bring.] 1. The planet Venus, when appearing as the morning star;—also applied, in Isaiah, by a bold metaphor, to a king of Babylon. How art thou fallen from heaven, Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground which didst weaken the nations! [Isa. xiv. 12.] Tertullian and Gregory the Great understood this passage of Isaiah in reference to the fall of Satan; in consequence of which the name Lucifer has since been applied to Satan. Kitto. 2. Hence, Satan. How wretched Is that poor man that hangs on princes’ favors . . . When he falls, he falls like Lucifer, Never to hope again. Shak. The application of this passage [in Isaiah] to Satan and to the fall of the apostate angels, is one of those gross perversions of sacred writ which so extensively obtain, and which are to be traced to a proneness to seek for more in a given passage than it really contains—a disposition to be influenced by sound rather than sense, and an implicit faith in received interpretations. Henderson. 3. A match made of a sliver of wood tipped with a combustible substance, and ignited by friction;—called also lucifer-match, and loco-foco. See LOCO-FOCO.