adulate
Americanverb (used with object)
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adulates,
present (3rd person singular)
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adulated,
past participle, past
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adulating
present participle
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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adulatesimple
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adulatessimple
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have adulatedperfect
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has adulatedperfect
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am adulatingprogressive
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are adulatingprogressive
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is adulatingprogressive
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have been adulatingperfect progressive
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has been adulatingperfect progressive
Past
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adulatedsimple
-
had adulatedperfect
-
was adulatingprogressive
-
were adulatingprogressive
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had been adulatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of adulate
First recorded in 1770–80; back formation from adulation
Explanation
To adulate is to flatter someone. A lot. Like, drop-on-your-knees-and-clasp-your-hands-and-say-"you-are-the-greatest-ever-to-walk-the-earth" a lot. The most interesting syllable in adulate is the ul-, which comes from ulos, a Latin word meaning "tail." The idea is that if you're heaping flattery on someone, you might as well be a dog wagging its tail, panting for a treat. Not that there's anything wrong with a little flattery. Or dogs.
Vocabulary lists containing adulate
Lesson 1
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Bleak House
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The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
They use poetic, romantic language to adulate this criterion lota and refuse to use any other instrument, similar to seniors who reject CDs and insist that “everything sounds better on vinyl.”
From Salon ● Jul. 10, 2012
Is the planet so emaciated in human leadership--the Mother Teresas and Geraldine Ferraros--that we have to adulate the American dollar?
From Time Magazine Archive
There must be villains and heroes, nations to hate or to adulate.
From Time Magazine Archive
Lady Feng was well alive to the fact that Madame Hsing was, by nature, simple and weak-minded, and that all she knew was to adulate Chia She so as to ensure her own safety.
From Hung Lou Meng, Book II Or, the Dream of the Red Chamber, a Chinese Novel in Two Books by H. Bencraft Joly
But I came not to adulate: Your frankness I shall compensate By an avowal just as plain.
From Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] A Romance of Russian Life in Verse by Henry Spalding
He adulates Minke, whom he has betrayed, and in House of Glass, the last novel, the author's torment of this official hypocrite is lashing and relentless.
From Time Magazine Archive
And to think that the nineteenth century takes on airs and adulates itself.
From Là-bas by Keene Wallace
In the fourteenth century the Pope is already called 'dominus deus noster'—precisely the style in which Martial adulates Domitian.
From Outspoken Essays by William Ralph Inge
Is it any wonder how the poor man adulates wealth, when those in high station—the great and titled of the earth—are so ready to worship and revere it!
From Confessions Of Con Cregan An Irish Gil Blas by Charles James Lever
Mr Tomkinson said he missed the now adulated head coach after Wolves' game against Ipswich, so he was excited when his door staff told him on Sunday "the big man is coming".
From BBC ● Apr. 14, 2025
“He seizes his chance, works like crazy, and takes power, making himself anointed and adulated by this incredible circle of French bosses and intellectuals,” Gaspard Gantzer, a former classmate of Macron’s, has written.
From The New Yorker ● Jun. 24, 2019
During our brief exchange, it was clear Plant didn’t want to be adulated — he didn’t need his ego stroked by a fawning fan.
From Salon ● Sep. 7, 2018
The egg yolk was perfectly gooey, but the egg white was too thick and adulated with too much soy sauce and other seasoning.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 1, 2018
It meant that the people were happy, and that Army, Navy and all the other departments were being openly and publicly adulated for the fine thing they had done for everyone.
From Cue for Quiet by Thomas L. Sherred
The behaviour towards the European team during this week's practice rounds, held in a family-friendly atmosphere, has been largely respectful and adulating.
From BBC ● Sep. 25, 2025
“Everything Cohen says about adulating, and then despising Trump, is bolstered and corroborated by massive other evidence.”
From Salon ● May 16, 2024
As master archer and adulating sidekick Kate Bishop, the lively Steinfeld crafts a performance of sharp contrasts opposite Jeremy Renner’s more serious-minded hero, Hawkeye/Clint Barton.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 30, 2021
This six-episode series is Steinfeld’s MCU origin story, and although she plays the adulating sidekick, she will probably see her status rise — and could potentially even take on the Hawkeye title herself.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 24, 2021
After the Cloth was taken away, the adulating Chorus was repeated.
From Zadig Or, The Book of Fate by Voltaire
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
