Lucifer

What comes to mind when you hear the word lucifer? Do you think of the planet Venus in the morning sky before sunrise? Or of bearing children? Or of a box of matches?
 
The word lucifer has its origins in Proto-Indo-European (PIE) leuk (light, brightness) and bher (to carry, to bear children). PIE leuk is the source of Latin lux (light). The Latin word lucifer meant ‘light bearing’ or ‘carrying the light’. It also referred to the ‘morning star’; i.e., the planet Venus in the early morning sky.
 
So how did this word come to be the name for a devil?
 
The Online Etymological Dictionary states that the connection of lucifer and the devil has its origins in translations of an Old Testament Biblical verse, Isaiah 14.12, “How you have fallen from heaven, oh morning star, son of the dawn!” The original Hebrew term for ‘morning star’ was translated into Greek as Phosphoros and into Latin as Lucifer (meaning, among other things, a fallen angel or devil).
 
Speaking of devils, in 1589, Peter Binsfeld, a German bishop and theologian as well as a noted witch-hunter, produced a document which classified various devils according to each of the seven deadly sins. Each sin had its own room in hell and its own unique torment. In Binsfeld’s view of hell, Lucifer governed the room reserved for pride (the deadliest of the seven sins) in which the damned were tortured and ‘broken on the wheel’.
 
In contrast, St Lucifer is a noted saint from 4th century Sardinia.
 
During the 19th century Industrial Revolution in the UK, the lucifer match or friction match was invented. Anyone could now easily light a fire. Originally, the match tip contained white phosphorus, a highly toxic and disfiguring substance for the girls and young women who made the matches. Sounds to me like another room in hell. One of the most famous early examples of industrial action in the UK was the Matchgirls Strike of 1888 when 1,400 women walked off the job in protest of such working conditions.
 
A famous song of World War One, Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag, referred to the use of a lucifer to light your cigarette and, “Smile, smile, smile!” Indeed.
 
Reference: Online Etymological Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com/
A short but gruesome history of the match
https://medium.com/study-of-history/a-short-history-c52a80c69d5e
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matchgirls%27_strike