cloying
Americanadjective
-
causing or tending to cause disgust or aversion through excess.
a perfume of cloying sweetness.
-
overly ingratiating or sentimental.
adjective
Other Word Forms
- cloyingly adverb
- uncloying adjective
Etymology
Origin of cloying
Explanation
If you’re a cynic who favors dark, edgy humor and thrillers, you probably find romantic comedies with their hearts, flowers, and sappy happy endings cloying — so sweet and sentimental that they make you want to retch. Whether you’re talking about dessert wine or love notes, cloying means sickeningly sweet. It’s how folks who love espresso feel about Frappuccino. Cloying comes in handy to describe things that are too sweet both literally. "Don’t worry about him trying to kiss you; your cloying perfume is sure to keep him at arm’s length." Or figuratively. "Your incessant flattery and cloying way of hanging on my every word was charming at first, but now I wish you’d go away."
Vocabulary lists containing cloying
Sickly Sweet Treats: Sappy and Insincere Valentine Words
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100 Words to Make You Sound Smart
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Pie Chart: Dessert Words
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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.
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
Heartfelt without being cloying, this ad gets all the elements of its message of coming together right in ways that a similar ad from Spectrum couldn’t quite match.
From Los Angeles Times • Feb. 8, 2026
The script leans so heavily into cloying emotionality that, in its climax, everyone dissolves into tears.
From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 23, 2025
The results were rarely inedible, but often disconcerting: over-salted, over-spiced, somehow both cloying and sharp, like they couldn’t decide what they wanted to be.
From Salon • Jul. 4, 2025
Combined with our exertion, the cloying heat was almost unbearable.
From "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson
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.
