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excessive devotion to someone; servile flattery.
Contemporary Examples

So here Obama is, craving security and adulation, but being denied both.
The Sprawling, Dimming Age of Obama Lloyd Green June 29, 2013

The thing I worry about is that he likes giving good speeches, he likes the adulation and he likes to make people happy.
The Times Has It Wrong on Obama Eric Alterman April 19, 2009

She was a fighter, a poor gal whose love of the movies propelled her into a complex life of adulation and rejection.
Dead Cool: Anna May Wong Simon Doonan February 27, 2010

Apollo misses the adulation of believers, and wants to fill a new planet with humans who will worship him.
Stalking the Literary Lion Liesl Schillinger March 19, 2011

The audience was not yet done showering Simons with adulation.
Milan Fall Fashion Week 2012: Raf Simons’s Last Collection at Jil Sander Robin Givhan February 24, 2012

Historical Examples

It is strange that the man so little prone to adulation should, himself, be the recipient of almost universal adoration.
Lincoln, the Politician T. Aaron Levy

Through all this adulation Franklin passed serenely, if not unconsciously.
The Age of Invention Holland Thompson

There is not in his history a trace of that rather gross adulation in which even Virgil does not disdain to indulge.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 16, Slice 7 Various

He had simply laughed off their adulation; but he was not laughing now.
Marion’s Faith. Charles King

Does he seek to enhance his glory by receiving the adulation of cringing slaves?
The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 5 (of 12) Robert G. Ingersoll

noun
obsequious flattery or praise; extreme admiration
n.

late 14c., “insincere praise,” from Old French adulacion, from Latin adulationem (nominative adulatio) “a fawning; flattery, cringing courtesy,” noun of action from past participle stem of aduliari “to flatter,” from ad- “to” (see ad-) + ulos “tail,” from PIE *ul- “the tail” (cf. Sanskrit valah “tail,” Lithuanian valai “horsehair of the tail”). The original notion is “to wag the tail” like a fawning dog (cf. Greek sainein “to wag the tail,” also “to flatter;” see also wheedle).