English

Noun

surfeit ‎(countable and uncountable, plural surfeits)

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.
   • Shakespeare

     Now comes the sick hour that his surfeit made.

   • 1611, Bible (KJV), 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.

   • Bunyan

     to prevent surfeit and other diseases that are incident to those that heat their blood by travels

4. Disgust caused by excess; satiety.
   • Burke

     Matter and argument have been supplied abundantly, and even to surfeit.

   • Sir Philip Sidney

     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.

Quotations

• For usage examples of this term, see Citations:surfeit.

Synonyms

• (excessive amount of something): excess, glut, overabundance, superfluity, surplus, ug
• (overindulgence in food or drink): gluttony, overeating, overindulgence

Translations

Verb

surfeit ‎(third-person singular simple present surfeits, present participle surfeiting, simple past and past participle surfeited)

1. (transitive) To fill to excess.
   • 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;

2. (transitive) To feed someone to excess.

   She surfeited her children on sweets.

3. (intransitive, reflexive) To overeat or feed to excess.
   • 1906, O. Henry, The Furnished Room

     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.

4. (intransitive, reflexive) To sicken from overindulgence.

Synonyms

• (to fill to excess): fill, stuff
• (to feed someone to excess): overfeed, stuff
• (to overeat or feed to excess): indulge, overeat, overfeed
• (to sicken from overindulgence): sicken

Translations

Related terms

• surfeiting
• surfeitly
• surfeitness
• surfeitous

Anagrams

• fustier