SURFEIT • E-FREE TRANSLATION.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

... I tell you, we shall consider thus: Every tribulation that we fall in, either cometh by our own known deserving deed bringing us to it, as the sickness that followeth our intemperate surfeit or the imprisonment or other punishment put upon a man for his heinous crime; or else it is sent us by God without any certain deserving cause open and known to ourselves, either for punishment of some sins past (we know not certainly which) or for ...

— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More

... could "put the stone" with Finlayson, or climb with the hardiest of the Ben-Nevis guides, or cast a fly with the daintiest of the Low-Country fishers,—redundant of imagination, redundant of speech, and with such exuberance in him that we feel surfeit from the overflow, as at the reading of Spenser's "Faerie Queene," and lay him down with a ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... "I dread ophthalmia. Surfeit of blue compels the use of green spectacles. I adore the skies of Hobbema and Backhuysen; one can look at them with the naked eye for twenty years, and yet never need an oculist ...

— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... occasion, a surfeit of society, or a dislike of business, came upon him, when he was desirous to take some recreation; just as though— ...

— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence

... and going at his caprice, stayed a month in every year at Longmeadow, where the townspeople, having had a surfeit of aboriginal names, called him John. He raised no objection, for that with half a dozen other Christian titles had been bestowed on him in baptism; and he entered the godly list ...

— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

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