SURFEIT • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Surfeit

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/sˈərfət/ Listen

noun

Surfeit n.

Excess in eating and drinking. "Let not Sir Surfeit sit at thy board." "Now comes the sick hour that his surfeit made."

Fullness and oppression of the system, occasioned often by excessive eating and drinking. "To prevent surfeit and other diseases that are incident to those that heat their blood by travels."

Disgust caused by excess; satiety. "Matter and argument have been supplied abundantly, and even to surfeit."

verb

Surfeit v. t. (past & past part. surfeited; pres. part. surfeiting)

To feed so as to oppress the stomach and derange the function of the system; to overfeed, and produce satiety, sickness, or uneasiness; often reflexive; as, to surfeit one's self with sweets.

To fill to satiety and disgust; to cloy; as, he surfeits us with compliments.

Surfeit v. i.

To load the stomach with food, so that sickness or uneasiness ensues; to eat to excess. "They are as sick that surfeit with too much as they that starve with nothing."

To indulge to satiety in any gratification.

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Etymology of 'Surfeit'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Surfeit" Quotes from Famous Books

... be easy to surfeit criticism with similar examples; where Webster is writing in sarcastic, meditative, or deliberately terror-stirring moods. The same dark dye of his imagination shows itself even more significantly ...

— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... the boiling tree, why are bells mightily and stopped because food is not refused because not any food is refused, because when the moment and the rejoicing and the elevation and the relief do not make a surface sober, when all that is exchanged and any intermediary is a sacrificed surfeit, when elaboration has no towel and the season to sow consists in the dark and no titular remembrance, does being weather beaten mean more weather and does it not show a sudden result of not enduring, does it not bestow a resolution to abstain in silence and move South and ...

— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein

... exclaimed, with animation, "tired of strawberries? Don't distress yourself too soon. Strawberries are a thing of which the public have never yet had a surfeit." ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... On whose lean sheep sit the prophetic crows, Here is the pomp that strips the houseless orphan, Here is the pride that breaks the desolate heart. 155 These are the lilies glorious as Solomon, Who toil not, neither do they spin,—unless It be the webs they catch poor rogues withal. Here is the surfeit which to them who earn The niggard wages of the earth, scarce leaves 160 The tithe that will support them till they crawl Back to her cold hard bosom. Here is health Followed by grim disease, glory by shame, Waste by lame famine, wealth by squalid want, And England's sin by ...

— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... all her Beauties flowing loose in his Arms, the Greatness of the Pleasure rais'd by the two heightning Circumstances of Unexpectancy and Surprize, was too large for the Capacity of his Soul, he found himself beyond Expression happy, but could not digest the Surfeit; he had no sooner Leisure to consider on his Joy, but he must reflect on the Danger of her that caus'd it, which forced him to suspend his Happiness to administer some Relief to her expiring Senses: He had a Bottle of excellent ...

— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

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