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Friday word: Lionize
Jul. 20th, 2012 06:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
med_catOne of those words that turns up on the SAT...;)
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Lionize: to treat as an object of great interest or importance
"to treat (someone) as a celebrity," used by Scott, 1809, and preserves lion in the sense of "person of note who is much sought-after" (1715), originally in reference to the lions formerly kept in the Tower of London (referred to thus from late 16c.), objects of general curiosity
Example:
"There, of course, I stumbled against Lady Brandon. 'You are not going to run away so soon, Mr. Hallward?' she screamed out. You know her curiously shrill voice?"
(Oscar Wilde, The Portrait of Dorian Gray, 1890)
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Lionize: to treat as an object of great interest or importance
"to treat (someone) as a celebrity," used by Scott, 1809, and preserves lion in the sense of "person of note who is much sought-after" (1715), originally in reference to the lions formerly kept in the Tower of London (referred to thus from late 16c.), objects of general curiosity
Example:
"There, of course, I stumbled against Lady Brandon. 'You are not going to run away so soon, Mr. Hallward?' she screamed out. You know her curiously shrill voice?"
"Yes; she is a peacock in everything but beauty," said Lord Henry, pulling the daisy to bits with his long nervous fingers.
"I could not get rid of her. She brought me up to royalties, and people with stars and garters, and elderly ladies with gigantic tiaras and parrot noses. She spoke of me as her dearest friend. I had only met her once before, but she took it into her head to lionize me. I believe some picture of mine had made a great success at the time, at least had been chattered about in the penny newspapers, which is the nineteenth-century standard of immortality.(Oscar Wilde, The Portrait of Dorian Gray, 1890)
