cloy
Americanverb (used with object)
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cloys,
present (3rd person singular)
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cloyed,
past participle, past
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cloying
present participle
verb (used without object)
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cloys,
present (3rd person singular)
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cloyed,
past participle, past
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cloying
present participle
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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cloysimple
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cloyssimple
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have cloyedperfect
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has cloyedperfect
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am cloyingprogressive
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are cloyingprogressive
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is cloyingprogressive
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have been cloyingperfect progressive
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has been cloyingperfect progressive
Past
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cloyedsimple
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had cloyedperfect
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was cloyingprogressive
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were cloyingprogressive
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had been cloyingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of cloy
1350–1400; aphetic variant of Middle English acloyen < Middle French enclo ( y ) er < Late Latin inclāvāre to nail in, equivalent to in- in- 2 + -clāvāre, verbal derivative of clāvus nail
Explanation
To cloy is to overwhelm someone with an excess of something that initially seemed sweet or pleasant. One piece of your favorite candy is pleasant, but the taste starts to cloy if you have too many more pieces. When someone constantly showers you with compliments, it can start to cloy, making the attention feel insincere and overbearing. The verb cloy applies to anything that becomes a bit too much to be enjoyable, from sweet treats to overpowering perfumes to too much affection. Understanding how things can cloy helps you recognize that even the nicest things can lose their charm when overdone.
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:
I added horseradish and hot sauce for a kick, and just enough ketchup to tint the sauce pale pink without letting it cloy.
From Seattle Times ● May 29, 2023
Even if you don’t know “Sweat,” though, “Clyde’s” may slightly cloy.
From New York Times ● Nov. 23, 2021
And whenever the cutesiness threatens to cloy, the script throws in a palate-cleansing taste of tart or bitter.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 11, 2014
What happened then, and I may have been two days in or three or five, I couldn’t really say, was that things began to cloy.
From The New Yorker ● Mar. 10, 2014
And I remember the smells of the hills, wild azalea and a very distant skunk and the sweet cloy of lupin and horse sweat on harness.
From "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck
The screen virtually overflows with computer-generated wizardry and cutesy flora and fauna, to a degree that cloys.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 15, 2019
Without stripping gears, she makes fast switches from explosive comedy to a sober emotionalism that never cloys.
From New York Times ● Apr. 20, 2017
In fact, if anything in “Olive and the Bitter Herbs” actually cloys, it is Olive’s own peevishness, strangely enough.
From New York Times ● Aug. 17, 2011
This sentiment seldom cloys because Ernest Truex gives the most serious, tender performance of his career and Marda Vanne as the wife never forgets restraint.
From Time Magazine Archive
Thy feet are a man's—not cloven Like these, not light as a boy's: The tresses and tendrils inwoven That lure us, the lure of them cloys Thee.
From Poems and Ballads (Third Series) Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne—Vol. III by Algernon Charles Swinburne
He envies the young for being young and for possessing the integrity that has eroded in him, the appetite for life that has cloyed on his palate, and the courage that has been drowned.
From Time Magazine Archive
Her formula, a combination of hard masculine realism with feminine deftness and sympathy, pleased many a post-War reader cloyed with hard-boiled sentimentality.
From Time Magazine Archive
If this cloyed on Holmes, he never gave a sign; he was obviously having too much fun watching Laski's continuous intellectual floor show.
From Time Magazine Archive
Appetites already cloyed by the night’s heat were further diminished.
From "Atonement" by Ian McEwan
The repast he serves is always sumptuous, but it seems to create an appetite proportioned to its abundance; for who has ever heard of the reader that was cloyed with Macaulay?
From Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 16 by Various
Toiling around the clock, haggard Indonesian firefighters on Borneo island cannot keep up with the blazes devouring landscapes and shrouding communities in a cloying haze.
From Barron's ● Sep. 6, 2026
But these attempts largely come off as cloying, even silly.
From Salon ● Aug. 12, 2026
Such a cloying tone from the queen of bitterness!
From Slate ● May 6, 2026
In its all-too-human view of life, this is, entertainingly, whatever the opposite of a cloying graduation speech is.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 20, 2026
Underneath the cloying fragrance of the decaying flowers, the air was laced with the odors of gunpowder, damp hay, and the dusty musk of horseflesh.
From "The City Beautiful" by Aden Polydoros
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
