Obs. exc. Hist. Pa. t. 7 (Sc.) laureat; pa. pple. 4–5 lauriat, 4–7 laureat(e, 5 lawriate, 6 lawreat. [f. L. laureāt-us: see prec. and -ATE3.]
1. trans. To crown with laurel in token of honor; to crown as victor, poet, or the like; to confer honorable distinction upon.
c. 1386. Chaucer, Monk’s T., 706. To Rome agayn repaireth Iulius With his triumphe lauriat ful hye.
1430. Lydg., St. Margaret, 497. Of martirdam thus she toke the croun … Was laureat thurgh hir parfit suffraunce. Ibid. (1430–40), Bochas, III. xv. (1554), 88 b. Thus in short time this prince in his estate On land and water was twise laureate.
c. 1470. Henryson, Mor. Fab., VIII. (Preach. Swallow), xxxix. Esope, that noble clerk, Ane poet wirthie to be lawriate.
1509. Barclay, Shyp of Folys (1874), II. 17. By his reygne is all Englonde lawreat. Ibid. (c. 1510), Mirr. Gd. Manners (1570), D j. Before the victorie no man is laureate, At ending thou shalt haue palme, victory and mede.
1581. Sidney, Apol. Poetrie (Arb.), 60. Let vs rather plant more Laurels, for to engarland our Poets heads, which honor of beeing laureat, as besides them, onely tryumphant Captaines weare, is [etc.].
2. spec. a. To graduate or confer a University degree upon. b. To appoint (a poet) to the office of ‘Laureate.’
1637–50. Row, Hist. Kirk (Wodrow Soc.), 447. After he had past his course of philosophie, and wes laureat in St. Androes.
1662. Ray, Three Itin., II. 157. Most of the students here … wear no gowns, till they be laureat as they call it—that is, commence.
1695. Sibbald, Autobiog. (1834), 129. I was a Basler and Magistrant under Mr. William Tweedy, who laureat me July 1659.
1715. M. Davies, Athen. Brit., I. 23. He [R. Whittington] supplicated the venerable Congregation of Regents … that he might be laureated. He was very solemnly crown’d, or his Temples adorn’d with a Wreath of Lawrel; that is, doctorated in the Arts of Grammar and Rhetorick.
1729. Pope, Of Poet Laureate, Wks. 1886, X. 448. If Mr. Cibber be laureated.
1774. Warton, Hist. Eng. Poetry, xxv. (1840), II. 332. About the year 1489, Skelton was laureated at Oxford, and in the year 1493, was permitted to wear his laurel at Cambridge.
1864. Burton, Scot Abr., I. v. 252. That old community of privileges which made the member of one university a citizen of all others,… whether he were laureated in Paris or Bologna, Upsala or St. Andrews.
1884. J. Harrison, Oure Tounis Colledge, iii. 63. In August 1587, Rollock ‘laureated’ his first class.
