Other forms: cloying
To cloy is to become sickening through being too sweet. A cloying sweetness, cloying sentiment, it began to cloy.
The sweetness need not be literal — cloying is used more of sentiment and charm than of food, and it always means too much of something pleasant. The word came from an old verb meaning to nail or block, by way of clogging.
1verbcloyTo become sickening through being too sweet.
“The first bite of the cake was lovely, but the sweetness soon began to cloy.”
cloy is a sickening.
From an aphetic form of Middle English acloyen, to nail or obstruct, from Latin clavus, a nail.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)kleh₂w-
Latin
clāvō
Vulgar Latin
*inclāvāre
Old French
enclouer
Middle English
acloyen
English, today
cloy
From an aphetic form of Middle English acloyen, from Old French enclouer, encloer, from Vulgar Latin inclāvāre, from Latin clāvō, from Latin clāvus.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA