Elysa Gardner 
Did you know?
We won’t bore you with the sappy tale behind the word cloying, because happily, there isn’t one. That’s because its history isn’t sweet, but rather tough as nails. Cloying comes from the verb cloy, which had among its earliest uses the meaning (to quote the Oxford English Dictionary) “to render [a gun] useless by driving a spike or plug into the touch-hole.” This ultra-specific sense of clogging and stuffing arose alongside both broader and figurative ones, including “to fill or choke up,” and cloy has since come to mean “to supply or indulge to excess.” Accordingly, cloying implies a nauseating amount of something that might be pleasing in smaller doses, especially both literal and metaphorical sweetness.
Examples of cloying in a Sentence
Sam Stone, Bon Appetit Magazine, 13 May 2025
Ultimately, Season 5 sees Joe behind bars and with his nether regions blown off by gunshot, with the majority of his remaining victims having survived his glass box, predatory cloying and delusional self-aggrandizement.
—Natalie Oganesyan, Deadline, 28 Apr. 2025
The persistent and cloying underscoring does not; the music exists to gin up emotions that aren’t earned.
—Nina Metz, Chicago Tribune, 3 Apr. 2025
The fragrance is sweet yet refined, never cloying or childish.
—Danielle James, Vogue, 1 Apr. 2025
See All Example Sentences for cloying
Cite this Entry
“Cloying.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cloying. Accessed 21 May. 2025.
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