Revere, reverence, venerate, worship, adore can all mean to regard with profound respect and honor.
All imply a recognition of the exalted character of what is so respected and honored, but they can differ in regard to their objects and to the feelings and acts which they connote. Their differences in implication extend to their corresponding nouns, reverence (for both verbs revere and reverence ), veneration, worship, and adoration.
One reveres with tenderness and deference not only persons or institutions entitled to respect and honor but also their accomplishments or attributes or things associated with or symbolic of such persons or institutions.
One reverences things more often than persons, especially things (as laws and customs) which have an intrinsic claim to respect or are commonly regarded as inviolable.
One venerates persons as well as things that are regarded as holy, sacred, or sacrosanct because of character, associations, or age.
In a narrow sense one worships only a divine being, God, a god, or a thing deified, when one pays homage by word or ceremonial. In wider use worship implies a kind of veneration that involves the offering of homage or the attribution of an especially exalted character, whether the object is a divine being or not.
Adore (see also ADORE 2 ) is often used for worship in application to divinity; worship, however, usually suggests the group approach, and adore the personal approach, to deity. Adore therefore commonly implies love and the performance of individual acts of worship that express unquestioning love and honor (as by obeisance, prostration, and prayer).
In more general application adore implies an extremely great and usually unquestioning love.