surfeit
Pronunciation
  • (RP) IPA: /ˈsɜː.fɪt/
  • (America) IPA: /ˈsɝː.fɪt/
Noun

surfeit

  1. (countable) An excessive amount of something.
    A surfeit of wheat is driving down the price.
  2. (uncountable) Overindulgence in either food or drink; overeating.
    • Now comes the sick hour that his surfeit made.
    • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), imprinted at London: By Robert Barker, […], OCLC 964384981 ↗, Luke 21:34 ↗:
      And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares.
  3. (countable) A sickness or condition caused by overindulgence.
    King Henry I is said to have died of a surfeit of lampreys.
    • to prevent surfeit and other diseases that are incident to those that heat their blood by travels
  4. Disgust caused by excess; satiety.
    • Matter and argument have been supplied abundantly, and even to surfeit.
      Now for similitudes in certain printed discourses, I think all herbalists, all stories of beasts, fowls, and fishes are rifled up, that they may come in multitudes to wait upon any of our conceits, which certainly is as absurd a surfeit to the ears as is possible.
Synonyms Translations Translations Translations Verb

surfeit (surfeits, present participle surfeiting; past and past participle surfeited)

  1. (transitive) To fill (something) to excess.
    Synonyms: stuff
    • 1610, The Tempest, by Shakespeare, act 3 scene 3,
      You are three men of sin, whom Destiny,
      That hath to instrument this lower world
      And what is in’t,—the never-surfeited sea
      Hath caused to belch up you;
    • 1875 Anthony Trollope, The Way We Live Now, London: Chapman and Hall, Volume 1, Chapter 23, p. 149,
      If this surfeited sponge of speculation, this crammed commercial cormorant, wanted more than that for his daughter, why could he not say so without asking disgusting questions such as these […] ?
  2. (transitive) To feed (someone) to excess (on, upon or with something).
    Synonyms: glut, overfeed, stuff
    She surfeited her children on sweets.
    • 1665, Robert Boyle, Occasional Reflections upon Several Subjects, London: Henry Herringman, Reflection 10, p. 186,
      […] ev’n the wholsomest Meats may be surfeited on, and there is nothing more unhealthy, than to feed very well, and do but very little Exercise.
    • 1906, O. Henry, “The Furnished Room” in The Four Million, New York: A.L. Burt, p. 240,
      To the door of this, the twelfth house whose bell he had rung, came a housekeeper who made him think of an unwholesome, surfeited worm that had eaten its nut to a hollow shell and now sought to fill the vacancy with edible lodgers.
    • 1909, Arnold Bennett, The Old Wives' Tale, Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, Volume 1, Book 2, Chapter 8, section 1, p. 318,
      If he said of a dish, in the local tongue: “I could do a bit of that!” or if he simply smacked his lips over it, she would surfeit him with that dish.
  3. (transitive) To make (someone) sick as a result of overconsumption.
    • 1640, Thomas Fuller, Joseph’s Partie-Colored Coat, London: John Williams, p. ,
      […] that proportion of meat surfetteth, and surchargeth the stomacks of some, which is not enough to satisfie the hunger of others,
    • 1755, George Colman the Elder, The Connoisseur (newspaper), No. 49, 2 January, 1755, London: R. Baldwin, Volume 1, p. 299,
      […] I imagine him poisoned by his wines, or surfeited by a favourite dish;
  4. (transitive, figurative) To supply (someone) with something to excess; to disgust (someone) through overabundance.
    Synonyms: cloy, glut
    • 1697, Aphra Behn, “On an ungrateful and undeserving Mistress, whom he cou’d not help Loving” in Poems upon Several Occasions, London: Francis Saunders, p. 50,
      While some glad Rival in her Arms did lye,
      Glutted with Love and surfeited with Joy.
    • 1795, Richard Cumberland (dramatist), Henry, London: Charles Dilly, Volume 4, Book 10, Chapter 3, p. 18,
      […] he shan’t shut me up in this dismal castle, and nauseate me with his surfeiting fondness:
    • 1844, Charles Lever, Tom Burke of “Ours”, Dublin: William Curry, Jun., Volume 2, Chapter 53, p. 31,
      […] I suppose his majesty thought we had enough of it on the field, and did not wish to surfeit us with glory.
    • 1922, F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned, New York: Scribner, Book 2, Chapter 2, p. 210,
      After supper, surfeited with the subject, she yawned.
    • 1977, Susan Sontag, “The Heroism of Vision” in On Photography, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, p. 77,
      The image-surfeited are likely to find sunsets corny; they now look, alas, too much like photographs.
  5. (transitive) To satisfy (someone's appetite) to excess (''both literally and figuratively).
    Synonyms: glut
    • 1796, Maria Edgeworth, The Parent’s Assistant; or, Stories for Children, London: J. Johnson, Volume 2, “The Mimic,” p. 98,
      […] his appetite for vulgar praise had not yet been surfeited;
    • 1922, Lenore Richards and Nola Treat, Quantity Cookery, Boston: Little, Brown, Chapter 2, p. 8,
      Every one has had the experience of being served with more food than can be eaten with relish and without waste. The effect is to surfeit the appetite and to limit the variety which a patron may have,
  6. (intransitive, reflexive) To overeat or feed to excess (on or upon something).
    Synonyms: glut, indulge, overfeed, overindulge
    • 1611, King James Version of the Bible, Gospel of Luke 21.34,
      And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares.
    • 1908, Jack London, The Iron Heel, New York: Macmillan, Chapter 17, p. 251,
      Millions of people were starving, while the oligarchs and their supporters were surfeiting on the surplus.
    • 1917, R. L. Alsaker, Maintaining Health, New York: Frank E. Morrison, Chapter 16, p. 174,
      Those who do not surfeit themselves do not weary quickly of any particular article of diet.
  7. (intransitive, reflexive, figurative) To indulge (in something) to excess.
    • 1748, William Gilpin (priest), A Dialogue upon the Gardens of the Right Honourable Viscount Cobham, at Stow in Buckinghamshire, London: B. Seeley, p. 54,
      After surfeiting itself with the Feast here provided for it, the Eye, by using a little Exercise in travelling about the Country, grows hungry again, and returns to the Entertainment with fresh Appetite.
    • 1847, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, London: Smith, Elder, Volume 2, Chapter 1, p. 16,
      […] a more fantastic idiot had never surfeited herself on sweet lies, and swallowed poison as if it were nectar.
    • 1869, Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, Hartford, CT: American Publishing Company, Chapter 47, p. 496,
      […] the intemperate zeal with which middle-aged men are apt to surfeit themselves upon a seductive folly which they have tasted for the first time.
  8. (intransitive, reflexive) To become sick from overindulgence (both literally and figuratively).
    • circa 1596 William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act I, Scene 2,
      […] they are as sick that surfeit with too much as they that starve with nothing.
    • 1642, Thomas Fuller, The Holy State and the Profane State, Cambridge: John Williams, Book 1, Chapter 13, p. 43,
      I must confesse at my first reading of them [the miracles of Hildegard of Bingen], my belief digested some, but surfeted on the rest:
    • 1669, John Dryden, The Wild Gallant, London: H. Herringman, Act II, Scene 2, p. 17,
      He that serves many Mistresses, surfeits on his diet, and grows dead to the whole sex:
    • 1861, Herbert Spencer, Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical, London: Williams and Norgate, Chapter 4, p. 149,
      But are children to be allowed to surfeit themselves? Shall they be suffered to take their fill of dainties and make themselves ill, as they certainly will do?
Translations
  • Russian: переполня́ть
  • Spanish: colmar
Translations Translations Related terms


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