adulate
/ˈadjʊleɪt
/verb [with object]
Praise (someone) excessively: he was adulated in the press...
- Louis's entry, then Conde's was a standard celebration of royal majesty, ‘an occasion to adulate the royal person
- As the opening titles read, ‘Madame de… was a very lovely, elegant and adulated woman.
- Anyway, since the '70s, when folks started adulating the '50s, the nostalgia industry has learned to mine and resell the best stuff from 20 years ago.
Derivatives
adulator
/ noun ...- In the crush at Sardi's, a tiny figure broke through the crowd of adulators to tell Rodgers: ‘This show of yours will run forever.’
- No one likes a smarmy adulator.
- That many in the eighteenth century actively resisted what seemed to them classical cultural imperialism, something supported by contemporaries they considered spineless adulators and imitators, may be less widely understood.
Origin
Mid 18th century: from Latin adulat- 'fawned on', from the verb adulari.