lionize

present singular third person lionizes · participle present lionizing · participle past lionized · past lionized · alternative lionise

1. BritishEnglishOxfordUStransitiveTo treat (a person) as if they were important, or a celebrity.

   He [Li Wenliang] died of COVID-19 in February, lionized by the Chinese public as a hero and whistleblower.

   2021 June 3, Katherine Eban, “The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins”, in Vanity Fair, archived from the original on 05 Jun 2021

   4 more examples

   Flare-riding is one of the most exotic and exhilarating sports in existence, and those who can dare and afford to do it are amongst the most lionized men in the Galaxy.

   1980 October, Douglas Adams, chapter 18, in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, London: Pan Books, →ISBN, page 106

   If the intelligentsia wouldn’t lionize [Naomi] Wolf, then the Bannonite right would: She could enter a world where mistakes don’t matter, no one feels shame, and fact-checkers are derided as finger-wagging elitists.

   2023 September 12, Helen Lewis, “From Feminist to Right-Wing Conspiracist”, in The Atlantic, →ISSN, archived from the original on 08 Nov 2023

   In early March, a person who had a history of posting Nazi imagery shared a 21-second video lionizing Juraj Krajčík. The clip shows one of his victims lying dead on the pavement.

   2025 March 15, A.C. Thompson, James Bandler, “The Rise and Fall of Terrorgram: Inside a Global Online Hate Network”, in ProPublica, archived from the original on 22 Apr 2025

   The liberal justices lionized Kennedy and other conservatives for refusing to overturn Roe v Wade out of the need they cited in Casey to maintain the supreme court’s image.

   2025 December 19, Ryan Doerfler, Samuel Moyn, “It’s time to accept that the US supreme court is illegitimate and must be replaced”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 19 Dec 2025

2. BritishEnglishOxfordUStransitiveTo visit (a famous place) in order to revere it.