Your post reminded of another on a different thread some time ago.
The poster made the point that for Protestants "worship" has quite a broad definition - that can be applied to attitudes toward youth, sex, beauty, power, money as you said. So a Protestant can see "worship" in quite a very large range.
Whereas, "worship" means something quite specific and different in Catholicism.
Yes. It's interesting, O Blogger, that you went to an English dictionary. That would be one of the las tplaces I'd go for a matter relating ultimately to a cocmmandment given in God's Language, namely Hebrew.
In my protestant seminary when we looked at the idea of worship we cranked through the etymmology some and it's relationship to worth. The line about a cemetary was mentioned: from memory) Many were buried there, some of honor and some of worship, where "honor" meant nobility and "worship" meant wealth.
Somebody said,"You worship what saves you," which is to say you "value" waht saves you, with respect to different kinds and degrees of salvation. I value exercise to save me from physical weakness and the blahs. But I value God supremely to save me from the whole mess.
So the "community usage" was "Supreme worship" or words of that kind.
But here we have veneration and worship, In English, as Webster's suggests, it's at most a matter of degree. Somehow I doubt the editors of Webster's care much about theology.