cloy
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
I added horseradish and hot sauce for a kick, and just enough ketchup to tint the sauce pale pink without letting it cloy.
From Seattle Times ● May 29, 2023
There is no trace of sugar, no cloy from traditional American-style pickle relish you usually get at the summer seafood shack.
From New York Times ● Oct. 20, 2021
And whenever the cutesiness threatens to cloy, the script throws in a palate-cleansing taste of tart or bitter.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 11, 2014
What happened then, and I may have been two days in or three or five, I couldn’t really say, was that things began to cloy.
From The New Yorker ● Mar. 10, 2014
And I remember the smells of the hills, wild azalea and a very distant skunk and the sweet cloy of lupin and horse sweat on harness.
From "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck
The screen virtually overflows with computer-generated wizardry and cutesy flora and fauna, to a degree that cloys.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 15, 2019
Without stripping gears, she makes fast switches from explosive comedy to a sober emotionalism that never cloys.
From New York Times ● Apr. 20, 2017
In fact, if anything in “Olive and the Bitter Herbs” actually cloys, it is Olive’s own peevishness, strangely enough.
From New York Times ● Aug. 17, 2011
And the magic of the gadgetry gradually cloys and clutters in the mind.
From Time Magazine Archive
Fruition adds no new wealth, but destroys, And while it pleaseth much, yet still it cloys.
From Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham by Denham, John, Sir
He envies the young for being young and for possessing the integrity that has eroded in him, the appetite for life that has cloyed on his palate, and the courage that has been drowned.
From Time Magazine Archive
Her formula, a combination of hard masculine realism with feminine deftness and sympathy, pleased many a post-War reader cloyed with hard-boiled sentimentality.
From Time Magazine Archive
If this cloyed on Holmes, he never gave a sign; he was obviously having too much fun watching Laski's continuous intellectual floor show.
From Time Magazine Archive
Appetites already cloyed by the night’s heat were further diminished.
From "Atonement" by Ian McEwan
Cakes were looked at in broad daylight, eaten not with cloyed finicky appetites, but with true zest.
From Dishes & Beverages of the Old South by McCulloch-Williams, Martha
“Very fresh and sweet, but not in a cloying way. I could smell it all day.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 2, 2026
Such a cloying tone from the queen of bitterness!
From Slate ● May 6, 2026
Not cloying, not milky, not trying to be liked by everyone at the bake sale.
From Salon ● Mar. 5, 2026
In its all-too-human view of life, this is, entertainingly, whatever the opposite of a cloying graduation speech is.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 20, 2026
Even now, stripped of their opulence, crowded into two-bedroom apartments in Hialeah and Little Havana, the Puente women clung to their rituals as they did their engraved silverware, succumbing to a cloying nostalgia.
From "Dreaming in Cuban" by Cristina García
