Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Surfeit   /sˈərfət/   Listen
Surfeit

noun
1.
The state of being more than full.  Synonyms: excess, overabundance.
2.
The quality of being so overabundant that prices fall.  Synonyms: glut, oversupply.
3.
Eating until excessively full.  Synonym: repletion.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Surfeit" Quotes from Famous Books



... that are convicted of injustice; while he that does not submit to him shall be subject to the same punishment, as if he had been guilty of impiety towards God himself. When we offer sacrifices to him, we do it not in order to surfeit ourselves, or to be drunken; for such excesses are against the will of God, and would be an occasion of injuries and of luxury; but by keeping ourselves sober, orderly, and ready for our other occupations, and being more temperate ...
— Against Apion • Flavius Josephus

... and send it to the Hummels. Germans like messes. I'm sick of the sight of this, and there's no reason you should all die of a surfeit because I've been a fool," cried ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... not, sweet! I'm weary grown, That I pretend such haste; Since none to surfeit e'er was known Before he had a taste: My infant love could humbly wait When, young, it scarce knew how To plead; but grown to man's estate, He ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... was called upon to put his Sire the Baron of Roche-Corbon some few feet under the turf. Then he was his own master, free to lead a life of wild dissipation, and indeed he worked very hard to get a surfeit of enjoyment. Now by making his crowns sweat and his goods scarce, draining his land, and a bleeding his hogsheads, and regaling frail beauties, he found himself excommunicated from decent society, and had for his friends only the plunderers of ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac

... and needs no less Her temp'rance over appetite, to know In measure what the mind may well contain; Oppresses else with surfeit, and soon turns Wisdom to folly. 1037 MILTON: Par. Lost, ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various

... one year later (1216), was the result of vexation of spirit or surfeit of peaches and cider, or poison, history does not positively say. But England shed no tears for the King to whom she owes her liberties in ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele

... quickly, she hindereth it. If the meat roast ill the witch hath turned the spit; and if the lumber pie taste ill she hath had a finger in it. If your sheep have the foot-rot—your horses the staggers or string-halt—your swine the measles—your hounds a surfeit—or your cow slippeth her calf—the witch is at the bottom of it all. If your maid hath a fit of the sullens, or doeth her work amiss, or your man breaketh a dish, the witch is in fault, and her shoulders can bear the blame. On this very day ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... course! Why did I not realise it before? I had too much music during those last days at Overdene; and SUCH music! I have been suffering from a surfeit of music, and the miss of it has given me this blank feeling of loneliness. No doubt we shall have plenty at Myra's, and Dal will be there to clamour for it if Myra ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay

... 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 in this subject, which makes it the more excellent and wonderful,—antiquity, and ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... almost a surfeit of music, if one dare, un-self-accused, employ such a word concerning a holy thing, they went out to wander a little about ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... dry, save when a shower of spray fell upon the roof and walls like heavy hail.... The men, however, were not perturbed. Sleeping, even under such conditions, was far preferable to doubtful rest in a bunk upon an attendant vessel, rolling and pitching with the motion of the sea. They had had a surfeit of such experience ... while the barrack was ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton

... The only way to throw out the eruption, as it is called, is to keep the body comfortably warm, and to give the beverages ordered by the medical man, with the chill off. "Surfeit water," saffron tea, and remedies of that class, are hot and stimulating. The only effect they can have, will be to increase the fever and the inflammation—to add fuel ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse

... who say what law shall be and how it shall be enforced. No stern, masterful men and women are they as some future moonstruck novelist or historian bent upon creating legendary lore may portray them. Voluptuaries are most of them, sunk in a surfeit of gorgeous living and riotous pleasure. Weak, without distinction of mind or heart, they have the money to hire brains to plan, plot, scheme, advocate, supervise and work for them. Suddenly deprived of their stocks and bonds they would find ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... is not sure what the clock meant the first time, he has a second chance of counting the strokes. This is no doubt an admirable plan under ordinary circumstances, but it does certainly try the patience of a sleepless dyspeptic after a surfeit of cafe-au-lait and honey; and when he has counted carefully the first time, and is bristling with the consciousness that it is only midnight, it is aggravating in the extreme to have the long slow story told a second time within a few feet ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... study Dr. MACDONALD'S romance and most thoroughly to digest it. In form, however, he will have little to teach them, for his book is very indifferently constructed. It may seem ungrateful in these rather skimpy days to complain of a surfeit of matter, but there is stuff in this book for two if not three novels. One cannot blame Dr. MACDONALD for his indignation at the miseries of child-labour, but here it is perhaps out of place. His Mr. Trevenna, the mystical parson, friend of smugglers and of everyone who suffered ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various

... springs from levity or weakness of mind, and makes us accept everyone's opinion, and another more excusable comes from a surfeit of matter. ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld

... There was a surfeit of killing, and a waning Revolution. We are far from saying that such a thing happened. But ambitious royalists might have thought their money well expended in removing the son of the murdered king from the scene. The claim of the American dauphin, Eleazer Williams, may have been fanciful, ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele

... four weeks which followed, the General gathered a surfeit of adulation, notwithstanding which he was constantly and with pain imagining a confused chatter of ladies, and when he shut his eyes with annoyance, there was Madame Delicieuse standing, and saying, "I knew not a reason why you should ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable

... old, and 'tis said to-day, That wealth to prosperous stature grown Begets a birth of its own: That a surfeit of evil by good is prepared, And sons must bear what allotment of woe Their sires were spared. But this I refuse to believe: I know That impious deeds conspire To beget an offspring of impious deeds Too like their ugly sire. But whoso is just, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... was invited to dine with the lion and saw that all the footmarks of his predecessors led into the lion's cave, and none away from it. He described in humorous detail his interviews with the Indiana lion, and the particulars of the surfeit of lobster as given in the President's dialect; he even repeated to her the story told him by Mr. Tom Lord, without omitting oaths or gestures; he told her how matters stood at the moment, and how the President had laid a trap for him which he could not escape; he must either enter a Cabinet ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams

... fashioned as much after the outward semblance of the ideal saint as can well be managed. The original notion was a very good one, and the revolution did not come before it was wanted; but it has been a little overdone of late, and we are threatened with as great a surfeit of small-limbed, yellow-headed criminals as we have had of the man-like black. One gets weary of the most perfect model in time, if too constantly repeated; as now, when we have all begun to feel that the resources of the angel's face and demon's soul have been more heavily drawn ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... of the old, and settles the heads of the young; cools the brain of the hard drinker, and warms that of the sober student; relieves the sick, and makes the healthy better. Epicures drink it for want of an appetite; bon vivants, to remove the effects of a surfeit of wine; gluttons, as a remedy for indigestion; politicians, for the vertigo; doctors, for drowsiness; prudes, for the vapors; wits, for the spleen; and beaux to improve their complexions; summing up, by declaring tea to be a treat for the frugal, a regale ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray

... truth, I was weary of fine scenery, and it seemed to me that I had eaten a score of mountains and quaffed as many lakes, all in the space of two or three days, and the natural consequence was a surfeit. ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... man with a better stomach for a fight than Martin de Garnache, nor did he stop to consider that here his appetite in that direction was likely to be indulged to a surfeit. The sight of those three men opposing him, swords drawn and Fortunio armed in addition with a dagger, drove from his mind every other thought, every other consideration but ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini

... unerring beauty which makes strong men weep. You shall hear her. I pray you have your handkerchers ready. His Flutiness the Duke—the title was granted last Candlemas—has a voice of a rare richness. He is cursed with a melancholy disposition most pleasing. He suffers from a surfeit of rejected love. A most ...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne

... possible! What if its short life shall have been made as unpleasant as possible? Conceive the remorse of Mrs. Thompson here if one of her children were to die untimely—if one of them were stricken down now, before her eyes, by this surfeit of too sudden joy! ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... representing a small fortune, and carpets on which it seemed almost sacrilege to tread covered the floors. But there was scarcely a book in the house. He had expended a fortune for physical pleasures, comforts, luxury, and display. It was pitiful to think of the physical surfeit and mental starvation of the children of such a home as that. When I went out, he told me that he came to the city a poor boy, with all his worldly possessions done up in a little red bandana. "I am a millionaire," ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... all despairs and shames, What the mean, forgotten names Of the thousand more or less, For one surfeit of success? ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... in the place of Prester John, Smites Priam, and mid-course in conquering Bids Caesar pause; the wit of Salomon, The wealth of Nero and the pride thereof, And battle-prowess—or of Tamburlaine Darius, Jeshua, or Charlemaigne,— Wheedle and bribe and surfeit Death in vain, And get no grace of him nor ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell

... Columbus began to build castles in Spain. Here was a fine answer to Buil and Margarite! Without waiting a week or two to get any of the gold this extraordinary man decided to hurry off at once to Spain with the news, not dreaming that Spain might, by this time, have had a surfeit of news, and might be in serious need of some simple, honest facts. But he thought his two caravels sufficiently freighted with this new belief—the belief that he had discovered the ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... London to such an extent that he died of surfeit, and was buried in the Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey, where his tombstone still exists, and ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... the most common and one of the greatest errors is to suppose that happiness is to be obtained by the pursuit of pleasure and excitement. The temporary enjoyment created by such is inevitably followed by reaction—lassitude and weariness—and human nature is palled by the surfeit of amusement as much as it is by the luxuries of the table. There cannot be a more humiliating spectacle than that of the man of the world, as he is called, or the woman of fashion or pleasure. Blase is too ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various

... was the daughter of a great lord; and when she got home, she did honour to Morgante as to an equal, and put Margutte into the kitchen, where he was in a state of bliss. He did nothing but swill, stuff, surfeit, be sick, play at dice, cheat, filch, go to sleep, guzzle again, laugh, chatter, and tell a ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt

... of atheism should have been affixed to a system whose very starting-point is Deity and whose great characteristic is the ignoration of everything but Deity, insomuch that the pure and devout Novalis pronounced the author a God-drunken man, and Spinozism a surfeit of Deity. [17] ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... thoughts, and rash-embraced despair, And shudd'ring fear, and green-eyed jealousy? O love! be moderate, allay thy ecstasy; In measure rain thy joy scant this excess; I feel too much thy blessing: make it less, For fear I surfeit! ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... passages that I ever had; I may therefore presume that they will last me my life—nay, I may indulge a hope that my thoughts will survive me. This continuity of impression is the only thing on which I pride myself. Even Lamb, whose relish of certain things is as keen and earnest as possible, takes a surfeit of admiration, and I should be afraid to ask about his select authors or particular friends after a lapse of ten years. As for myself, any one knows where to have me. What I have once made up my mind to, I abide by to the end of ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... sees not Hermia: Hermia sleepe thou there, And neuer maist thou come Lysander neere; For as a surfeit of the sweetest things The deepest loathing to the stomacke brings: Or as the heresies that men do leaue, Are hated most of those that did deceiue: So thou, my surfeit, and my heresie, Of all be hated; but the most of me; And all my powers addresse your loue and ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... movements occasionally follow. Sometimes they are due to an internal spiritual cause, such as previous thoughts. At other times they arise from some internal corporeal cause, as from abundance or weakness of nature, or even from surfeit of meat or drink. Now every one of these three causes can be without sin at all, or else with venial sin, or with mortal sin. If it be without sin, or with venial sin, it does not necessarily prevent the receiving of this sacrament, so as to make a man guilty of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... preference in the favor of this princess; the clue to find her when you have left her; and the assurance that you will get a surfeit as ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... madam, if your miseries were in the same abundance as your good fortunes are. And yet, for aught I see, they are as sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing. It is no small happiness, therefore, to be seated in the mean; superfluity comes sooner by white hairs,[17] but ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare

... downright debased, are so easily practised on and cajoled, as the great mass of our own. I hope I have never been addicted to the vice of winning golden opinions by a sacrifice of sentiments or principles; but this dinner has given me a surfeit of what is called "popularity," among a people who, while affecting to reduce everything to a standard of their own creating, do not give themselves time or opportunity to ascertain facts, ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper

... been a Boswell there to get the good things, for the novelty of the situation inspired wit even in minds where wit had never glowed before. Choice bits which at other times would fairly have gone on official record were now passed almost unnoticed, so great was the surfeit. Instead of men going out to lunch, lunch came in to them. Bridget Haggerty, who by reason of her long connection with the boarding-house across the street was a sort of unofficial official of the State, came over and made the coffee and sandwiches, all the while calling down blessings ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell

... were the ravens who plied me with sweetings in all stages of development until I could not have swallowed another to save the combined kingdoms of Judah and Israel. I was ill all night after the surfeit, but I bore the sweetings no grudge for my misplaced ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland

... we realize what is for our good. Knowledge, development, culture, may reach their zenith and pass beyond. We may become debauched with the surfeit of these things. The end and aim of ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... shelters his longing from any such surfeit. Yes, he is wiser that knows the shadow makes lovely the substance, wisely regarding the ways of that irresponsible shadow which, if you grasp at it, flees, and, when you avoid it, will follow, gilding all life with its glory, and keeping always one woman young and most fair and most wise, ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell

... for ever disappointed me, and at last I abandoned hope. In solitude and exile Mercedes degenerated sadly; got monstrously fat; too indolent to gnaw, let her teeth grow to a preposterous length; and in the end died of a surfeit of smetana. ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... pig's-fry and Irish stew. I ordered the dinner, sir, and got more credit for inventing it than they ever gave to Ude or Soyer. The Marquess was in ecstasies, the Earl devoured half a bushel of sprats, and if the Viscount is not laid up with a surfeit of bullock's heart, my name's not Howard Walker. Billy, as I call him, was in the chair, and gave my health; and what do you think the ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray

... hours—'labuntur anni', 'pereunt et imputantur' ever in his thoughts: and though the world of old moved slower, the man of business has rarely belied his name. A more plausible explanation is that the custom has died of surfeit. As increased facilities of travel made the world smaller, the circle of those that might be visited and saluted by the active grew boundless; so that on both sides limits were desired. Another consideration is that with new facilities came increased ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen

... mortar with which his bedchamber had been plastered. Also that his head had swollen in consequence of a great fire of coals, and that this had been the cause of his death; others said that he had died of a surfeit from over eating. He was in the thirty-third year of his age. And though he and Scipio AEmilianus both died in the same manner, we have not found out that any investigation into the death of either ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... will not say, but the best men may die of a consumption, a dropsie, or a surfeit; yea, that these may meet upon a man to end him: yet I will say again, that many times these diseases come through mans inordinate use of things. Much drinking brings dropsies, consumptions, surfeits, and many other diseases; and I doubt, that Mr. Badman's death did come by his ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan

... had first undergone a gradual impairment of health because of calcareous matters to excess in their general conditions of sustenance; and the lime proves potent to cure in the offspring what, through the parental surfeit, was entailed as [xvii] a heritage of disease. Just in the same way the mineral waters of Missisquoi, and Bethesda, in America, through containing siliceous qualities so sublimated as almost to defy the analyst, are effective to cure ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie



Words linked to "Surfeit" :   overmuchness, cloy, superabundance, fullness, oversupply, furnish, glut, eating, feeding, render, overabundance, overmuch, luxuriate, supply, provide, indulge, excess



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com