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VENERATION
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Religious zeal; the willingness to serve God
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("veneration" is a kind of...):
worship (the activity of worshipping)
Sense 2
Meaning:
A feeling of profound respect for someone or something
Example:
his respect for the law bordered on veneration
Synonyms:
awe; fear; reverence; veneration
Classified under:
Nouns denoting feelings and emotions
Hypernyms ("veneration" is a kind of...):
emotion (any strong feeling)
Derivation:
venerate (regard with feelings of respect and reverence; consider hallowed or exalted or be in awe of)
Context examples:
Then they seemed so familiar with French names and French authors: but my amazement reached its climax when Miss Temple asked Helen if she sometimes snatched a moment to recall the Latin her father had taught her, and taking a book from a shelf, bade her read and construe a page of Virgil; and Helen obeyed, my organ of veneration expanding at every sounding line.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
When the day arrived, my very carpet-bag was an object of veneration to the stipendiary clerks, to whom the house at Norwood was a sacred mystery.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
I had not yet been a year in this country before I contracted such a love and veneration for the inhabitants, that I entered on a firm resolution never to return to humankind, but to pass the rest of my life among these admirable Houyhnhnms, in the contemplation and practice of every virtue, where I could have no example or incitement to vice.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
He always sat in a particular corner, on a particular stool, which was called Dick, after him; here he would sit, with his grey head bent forward, attentively listening to whatever might be going on, with a profound veneration for the learning he had never been able to acquire.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
I was struck with a profound veneration at the sight of Brutus, and could easily discover the most consummate virtue, the greatest intrepidity and firmness of mind, the truest love of his country, and general benevolence for mankind, in every lineament of his countenance.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
I told him all I knew, but he would have believed anything I might have taken it into my head to impart to him; for he had a profound veneration for my abilities, and informed his wife in my hearing, on that very occasion, that I was a young Roeshus—by which I think he meant prodigy.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
But when some confessed they owed their greatness and wealth to sodomy, or incest; others, to the prostituting of their own wives and daughters; others, to the betraying of their country or their prince; some, to poisoning; more to the perverting of justice, in order to destroy the innocent, I hope I may be pardoned, if these discoveries inclined me a little to abate of that profound veneration, which I am naturally apt to pay to persons of high rank, who ought to be treated with the utmost respect due to their sublime dignity, by us their inferiors.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
But, as I have recorded in the narrative of my school days, his veneration for the Doctor was unbounded; and there is a subtlety of perception in real attachment, even when it is borne towards man by one of the lower animals, which leaves the highest intellect behind.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
She was so devoted, she had such a quick perception of what it would be well to say, and what it would be well to leave unsaid; she was so forgetful of herself, and so regardful of the sorrow about her, that I held her in a sort of veneration.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
