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Revere

Peyton Manning announced his retirement—and his love for football

In Peyton Manning’s emotional speech announcing his retirement from pro football, he spoke plainly about his affection for the sport:

When someone thoroughly exhausts an experience, they can’t help but revere it. I revere football.

Revere means “to have great respect for (someone or something)” or “to show devotion and honor to (someone or something).” It comes from the Latin verb vereri, meaning “to fear” or “to respect.” The word reverence is much older in English, and revere developed as a way to say “to treat with reverence” in a single efficient word. Reverent and reverend also share the same roots and are older than revere.

The Latin word vereri is distantly related to the root of another word that is has “fear” as part of its meaning: wary.


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