Is there a word meaning "to support something as if you are waving flags for it"?

Is there a word meaning "to support something as if you are waving flags for it"?

I remember I may have encountered a word "flagwave" somewhere, in a sentence looking like "Do not flagwave for a technology". But I could not find this word in dictionaries, and only found this usage in one piece of news:

The Guardian’s appraisal of Emily Fridlund’s contender, History Of Wolves, was simply “strikingly impotent’. The New York Times, which you would expect to flagwave for virtuoso American writer George Saunders, moaned that Lincoln in the Bardo – by some distance the Man Booker favourite – would have “benefited immensely from some judicious pruning”.

So generally, I'm looking for a word meaning "to support something as if you are waving flags for it" that can be used as in "[?] for an ideology" or "[?] for our team" (this can be literally waving flags).

Additionally, if I say "to flagwave for sth", will native speakers get the meaning of the phrase?

Solution 1:

Possibly you'll get no closer than champion.

It's perhaps rather old-fashioned, but that perhaps hints at the days of chivalry, with all the pennants flying. I'll give Merriam-Webster's relevant definitions of the more common noun first:

champion ...

2: a militant advocate or defender

• a champion of civil rights

3: WARRIOR, FIGHTER

• a champion of his king

4: one that does battle for another's rights or honor

• God will raise me up a champion — Sir Walter Scott; Ivanhoe

which inform the senses of the verb

champion [transitive verb]

1: to act as militant supporter of : UPHOLD, ADVOCATE

• always champions the cause of the underdog

2: to protect or fight for as a champion

• championed the ladies chivalrously in the tilts

Solution 2:

What immediately comes to mind for me is the word semaphore used metaphorically in the verb form.

Semaphore is a system of sending messages by using two flags. (Collins)

an apparatus for visual signaling (as by the position of one or more movable arms) (Websters)

to signal by semaphore (Collins)

Used metaphorically, it may get you what you need.

Using your example: "The New York Times, which you would expect to semaphore for virtuoso American writer George Saunders"

Another example: "He semaphored every emotion, belting love songs with outspread arms or pounding his hand on his heart."

For other such examples see here.