Cloying means sweet to the point of being unpleasant. A cloying dessert, a cloying scent, cloying sentimentality.
It describes what happens after a few mouthfuls rather than the first, since the trouble with a cloying thing is that it does not let up. It is used as much of sentiment as of taste, and cloying sentimentality is nearly a fixed phrase.
1adjectivecloyingSweet to the point of being unpleasant.
“The cake was covered in a cloying pink icing that made my teeth ache.”
cloying is a quality.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)kleh₂w-
Latin
clāvō
Vulgar Latin
*inclāvāre
Old French
enclouer
Middle English
acloyen
English
cloy
English, today
cloying
by surface analysis, cloy + -ing. cloy comes 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