cloy

From an aphetic form of Middle English acloyen, from Old French enclouer, encloer, from Vulgar Latin *inclāvāre, from Late Latin clāvāre, present active infinitive of clāvō, from Latin clāvus.

• (General American) IPA^(key): /klɔɪ/

• Audio (Southern England):

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• Rhymes: -ɔɪ

cloy (third-person singular simple present cloys, present participle cloying, simple past and past participle cloyed)

1. (transitive) To fill up or choke up; to stop up.
2. (transitive) To clog, to glut, or satisfy, as the appetite; to satiate.
3. (transitive) To fill to loathing; to surfeit.
   • 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter III, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:

     Now all this was very fine, but not at all in keeping with the Celebrity's character as I had come to conceive it. The idea that adulation ever cloyed on him was ludicrous in itself. In fact I thought the whole story fishy, and came very near to saying so.

• (fill or choke up): block, block up, choke, fill, fill up, stop up, stuff, stuff up
• (satiate): fill up, glut, gorge, sate, satiate, satisfy, stodge, stuff, stuff up
• (fill to loathing): jade, nauseate, pall, sicken, surfeit

• clove

• Coly, coly