Cloying

//ˈklɔɪ.ɪŋ// adj, verb

adj, verb ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    present participle and gerund of cloy form-of, gerund, participle, present
Adjective
  1. 1
    Unpleasantly excessive.

    "The cloying fondness she displayed was what, in the end, drove me away."

  2. 2
    Excessively sweet.

    "Oliver (Barry Keoghan): I don't normally like chocolate cake. / Elspeth (Rosamund Pike): Yes, it can be cloying, can't it?"

Adjective
  1. 1
    overly sweet wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
saccharineacridbadbarfybatheticbeery

Example

More examples

"She refers to Nostradamus with the rather cloying nickname "Nosty"."

Etymology

By surface analysis, cloy + -ing.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.