These words mean to diminish, satisfy completely or take away an appetite for something, often because of over-exposure to it. Surfeit suggests an excess of something that may be appealing in itself but that causes antipathy in quantity: eating second and third helpings of the plum pudding until he was surfeited ; a public surfeited to the point of boredom by the violence displayed on the television screen. Glut restricts itself to one aspect of surfeit , concentrating on the notion of over-supply without necessarily suggesting any concomitant antipathy: a society glutted yet more and more avid for provocative entertainment. Sate and satiate once suggested the simple appeasement of hunger or appetite, but now they suggest over-indulgence to the point of discomfort. Of the two, satiate is the milder and more abstract, and is still sometimes used for simple appeasement: gulping water from the offered flask until his thirst was satiated . Sate almost invariably suggests the discomfort of over-indulgence, especially in specifically sensual pleasure; the resulting discomfort may be felt as an enfeeblement of the senses or a sybaritic exhaustion or ennui: collapsing into sleep at last, sated with drink and carousing.

Dull specifically emphasizes an overtone of sate pertaining to sensory enfeeblement through over-exposure: senses dulled from three days of partying; dulling her appetite by wolfing down half a dozen chocolates. Pall suggests that an attractive or desired object has lost its appeal through over-exposure: a face whose insipid prettiness palled on him the more he looked at it; an interest in theories of conspiracy that palled soon after the detailed report was isused. Cloy suggests a sense of heavy oppression or suffocation caused by excessive gratification of an initially pleasing sensation, especially a sweet smell or fulsome manner: a strong scent of lilacs in the room that soon became cloying ; a maternal love so strong that he found it cloying .