What's the difference between
and
Enter two words to compare and contrast their definitions, origins, and synonyms to better understand how those words are related.

What is the difference between sickness and surfeit?

sickness | surfeit |

As nouns the difference between sickness and surfeit

is that sickness is the quality or state of being sick or diseased; illness; disease or malady while surfeit is (countable) an excessive amount of something.

As a verb surfeit is

to fill to excess.

sickness

English

Noun

(en-noun)
  • The quality or state of being sick or diseased; illness; disease or malady.
  • I do lament the sickness of the king. -
    Trust not too much your now resistless charms; Those, age or sickness soon or late disarms. -.
    Sickness is a dangerous indulgence at my time of life. -.
  • Nausea; qualmishness; as, sickness of stomach.
  • Derived terms

    *

    Synonyms

    * nausea * disease * illness * infirmity * malady

    Hyponyms

    * car sickness * homesickness * motion sickness

    References

    *

    surfeit

    English

    Noun

  • (countable) An excessive amount of something.
  • A surfeit of wheat is driving down the price.
  • (uncountable) Overindulgence in either food or drink; overeating.
  • * Shakespeare
  • Now comes the sick hour that his surfeit made.
  • (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
  • 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.

    Synonyms

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

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To fill to excess.
  • * 1610 , , 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;
  • To feed someone to excess.
  • She surfeited her children on sweets.
  • (reflexive) To overeat or feed to excess.
  • *1906 , O. Henry,
  • *: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.
  • (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