SURFEIT • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • 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

... ancient rule, and profession, and practice of truth in scripture, to Christ and his apostles, but halt in their grandfathers' tombs. But sometimes things are commended, because new. The nature of man being inclined to change and variety, and ready to surfeit and loath accustomed things, even as the stomach finds appetite for new and unusual diets, so the mind of man hath a secret longing after new doctrines and things. Now we have both these combined together ...

— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... riches to Valencia came they home. That very noble cleric, the Bishop don Jerome, When a surfeit of the fighting he had had of his hands twain, Was at a loss to number the Moors that he had slain. What fell to him of booty was sovran great of worth. My lord Cid don Rodrigo (in a good time was his birth,) ...

— The Lay of the Cid • R. Selden Rose and Leonard Bacon

... soot—all the decay and rubbish of a generation of neglect littered the place and filled it with an acrid odour. From one of the rooms we looked forth through a little discoloured window upon a patch of forlorn weedy garden, where the very cats glowered in a depression that no surfeit of mice could assuage. ...

— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... knew not how to appreciate his style of wit and pleasantry, or that he was in reality a very disagreeable person, the fact is that—but hold! let us say nothing ill of him; he died last week, at Folkestone, of a surfeit of goose, in the forty-ninth year of his age. For the consolation of such as were amused by him, and regret his loss, be it remembered that there are still to be found many Jack Richards ...

— Stories of Comedy • Various

... Sir William Temple as his friend and domestic companion. When he had been about two years with Sir William, he contracted a very long and dangerous illness by eating an immoderate quantity of fruit. To this surfeit he was often heard to ascribe that giddiness in his head which, with intermissions sometimes of longer and sometimes of shorter continuance, pursued him to the ...

— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

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