Elysa Gardner 
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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
Ryan Deto, Axios, 7 Apr. 2025
But the effort is just what Bri needed in order to restore her faith in their relationship — by morning, with cloying smiles stamped on their faces, Bravo’s most inoffensive couple is back on track.
—Rafaela Bassili, Vulture, 1 Apr. 2025
Future Disney Channel star Brandon Baker plays Mowgli, in a cloying, awkward performance that fits with the hacky sitcom writing.
—Josh Bell, Vulture, 21 Mar. 2025
Here came the cloying sentiments, the farcical calls for unity, the moment of sorrow over a long list of recent American tragedies whose anguish this spectacle purported to relieve.
—Nick Paumgarten, The New Yorker, 3 Mar. 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 15 Apr. 2025.
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