lionize
/ˈlʌɪənʌɪz
/(also lionise)
verb [with object]
Give a lot of public attention and approval to (someone); treat as a celebrity: modern sportsmen are lionized and feted...
- Nehru eulogized him and lionized him as a great secularist and anti-feudal.
- Nevertheless, he is a flamboyant showman, fond of electric blue suits, who once turned up on a motorbike to wild applause at the Cannes festival, where he is lionised.
- He gets an evening devoted to lionizing him Thursday night by a group that considers itself progressive.
Synonyms
celebrate, fete, glorify, honour, bestow honour on, exalt, acclaim, admire, commend, sing/sound the praises of, praise, extol, applaud, hail, make a fuss of/over, make much of, cry up, venerate, eulogize, sing paeans to, reverence, pay homage to, pay tribute to, put on a pedestal, hero-worship, worship, idolize, adulate;
aggrandize
rare laud, panegyrize
Derivatives
lionization
- The type of flattery that has reached dangerous proportions today is the absurd adulation and lionization of movie stars and other celebrities.
- He owed his eventual lionization to Seeger, who formed with him the Almanac Singers, which first brought his work to popular attention.
- It was a lionization of the ‘good man,’ who quietly bears the burden for his neighbor.
lionizer
- Ever since his death in 1963, progressive lionisers of John have remembered the peace but ignored the obedience.
- Yet he was also prepared to defend Rudyard Kipling, lioniser of colonial officers bent double beneath ‘The White Man's Burden’.