adoration

Noun

adoration (countable and uncountable, plural adorations)

1. (countable) An act of religious worship.
   • We incessantly look forward, and endeavour, by prayers, adoration, and sacrifice, to appease those unknown powers, whom we find, by experience, so able to afflict and oppress us.a. 1779, David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
2. (uncountable) Admiration or esteem.
   • […] if she can create the sense of beauty in people whose lives have been sordid and ugly...she is worthy of all your adoration, worthy of the adoration of the world.1891, Oscar Wilde, “Chapter 5”, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, London; New York, N.Y.: Ward Lock & Co., →OCLC
3. (uncountable) The act of adoring; loving devotion or fascination; an intense love sometimes bordering on veneration or infatuation.
   • Because of Gerald's adoration for Katie, he was blind to her flaws.
   • He adored Sorais quite as earnestly as Sir Henry adored Nyleptha, and his adoration had not altogether prospered.1887, H[enry] Rider Haggard, chapter XVI, in Allan Quatermain […], London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC
4. (historical) The selection of a pope by acclamation and before any formal ballot (excluded as a voting method in 1621 by Pope Gregory XV).
5. Worship of Christ in the Eucharistic host in the Catholic Church, often while exposed in a monstrance.