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glut

American  
[gluht] / glʌt /

verb (used with object)

  • gluts,
    present (3rd person singular)
  • glutted,
    past participle,  past
  • glutting
    present participle
  1. to feed or fill to satiety; sate.

    to glut the appetite.

    Synonyms:
    satiate, stuff, surfeit
  2. to feed or fill to excess; cloy.

  3. to flood (the market) with a particular item or service so that the supply greatly exceeds the demand.

  4. to choke up.

    to glut a channel.


verb (used without object)

  • gluts,
    present (3rd person singular)
  • glutted,
    past participle,  past
  • glutting
    present participle
  1. to eat to satiety or to excess.

    Synonyms:
    cram, gorge

noun

  1. a full supply.

  2. an excessive supply or amount; surfeit.

    Synonyms:
    superabundance, excess, surplus
  3. an act of glutting or the state of being glutted.

glut British  
/ ɡlʌt /

noun

  1. an excessive amount, as in the production of a crop, often leading to a fall in price

  2. the act of glutting or state of being glutted

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

verb

  1. to feed or supply beyond capacity

  2. to supply (a market) with a commodity in excess of the demand for it

  3. to cram full or choke up

    to glut a passage

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
glut Cultural  
  1. An oversupply of goods on the market.


Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

Inflected Forms

Participles

Conjugated Forms

Present

Past

Future

Etymology

Origin of glut

1275–1325; Middle English gluten, back formation from glutun glutton 1

Explanation

A glut is too much of something. A glut of gas in the marketplace can lower its price. A glut of heavy metal T-shirts in your dresser, however, has nothing to do with the economy but might be a signal that it's time to clean your room. Glut comes from the Old French gloter, meaning "to swallow too much." The glottis is the part of your body where your vocal folds reside and where you swallow. If you go to the movies alone and get the family tub of popcorn, you are glutting yourself on the salty snack, but do try not to get any popcorn stuck in your glottis. Glut is used more commonly in reference to the economics of the marketplace, where an oversupply of one thing lowers prices.

Keep Reading on Vocabulary.com

Vocabulary lists containing glut

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

See Examples For:

Bigger chicken breeds and flocks staying free of disease over the summer led to a glut in an industry that slaughters more than nine billion birds a year.

From The Wall Street Journal Aug. 11, 2026

The private-equity industry is still grappling with unloading a glut of companies bought years ago, and the pace of new fundraising has slowed.

From The Wall Street Journal Aug. 5, 2026

In one sense, he was selling himself short: “Revolver” featured three Harrison compositions, a glut of new material that included “Taxman,” “Love You To” and “I Want to Tell You.”

From Salon Aug. 5, 2026

In the glut of new AI certifications, there are likely a couple of money-grab scams out there.

From MarketWatch Jul. 31, 2026

Just looking at them reminds me of Christmas and the sticky feeling after eating too many, the surfeit and glut.

From "Cat's Eye" by Margaret Atwood

Stock prices follow the same pattern, appearing cheap during upswings before crashing when hardware gluts emerge.

From Barron's Feb. 23, 2026

Ultimately, this all helps promote true sustainability: long-lasting and durable products and batteries that aren’t just for luxury on one end, black-market speculation on the other, and market gluts on yet another.

From Slate Jul. 15, 2024

Good harvest years can produce market gluts that make it hard to turn a profit.

From Salon Jun. 8, 2023

Shipping rates that spiked during disruptions caused by the pandemic have plummeted — some are now calling it a “freight recession” — as inventory gluts across the U.S. lowered demand.

From Seattle Times Dec. 5, 2022

Giving himself repeated daily shots of canine insulin in the abdomen, arm, or leg, Woolf almost certainly spent his days boomeranging between insulin gluts and deficits.

From "Seabiscuit: An American Legend" by Laura Hillenbrand

Today it is about 900,000 barrels a day, or less than 1%, in a glutted market.

From The Wall Street Journal Jan. 5, 2026

It's that ebullient zest for discovery that's kept Steves such a durable resource in a field now glutted with dubiously qualified influencers.

From Salon Feb. 28, 2025

Sushi Kiyono has been there for 26 years, making it a rare small-business stalwart on Beverly Drive, which is glutted with chain restaurants like Jimmy John’s and Chipotle.

From Los Angeles Times Mar. 27, 2024

Over time, Instagram became glutted with sponsored content and buy links, but its shopping interface never derailed the overall experience of the app.

From New York Times Feb. 1, 2024

By midday, the grandstand and clubhouse were glutted, so Vanderbilt redirected fans by the thousands into the infield.

From "Seabiscuit: An American Legend" by Laura Hillenbrand

Unfinished Ford trucks — 40,000 or so — are glutting Kentucky Speedway’s auxiliary parking lots in Sparta, a victim of the semiconductor shortage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, TheDrive.com reported.

From Seattle Times Sep. 23, 2022

For many years, Mr. Xi announced China’s intention to reduce its steel production, only for output to rise the next year as individual provinces increased production, glutting the market and hurting the industry nationally.

From New York Times Jul. 26, 2022

The glutting on essential groceries, eggs, milk, bottled water, so that empty grocery shelves confronted the more restrained among us.

From Salon Jun. 20, 2020

If anything, it does the opposite, glutting the viewer with despair.

From The Guardian Mar. 21, 2020

A half-crazy miner, named Comstock, had discovered there a vein of such richness that the "Comstock Lode" was presently glutting the mineral markets of the world.

From The Boys' Life of Mark Twain by Albert Bigelow Paine

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