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cloy

[kloi] / klɔɪ /


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 film proves the perfect outlet for the little-girlishness that sometimes cloys in her grown-up roles.

From Time Magazine Archive

And Brian had found in Joan's face the vigor of sweetness, not the kind that cloys.

From Kenny by Joseph Pierre Nuyttens

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

Their senses, cloyed by grief, knew that whatever it was of ill-omen, it could not touch them now.

From Trusia A Princess of Krovitch by Davis Brinton

Toiling around the clock, haggard Indonesian firefighters on Borneo island cannot keep up with the blazes devouring landscapes and shrouding communities in a cloying haze.

From Barron's ● Sep. 6, 2026

Such a cloying tone from the queen of bitterness!

From Slate ● May 6, 2026

In his pursuit of answers, Roher employs a cloying framework: his loving wife occasionally narrating as if this were a storybook and Roher the protagonist of a scary adventure.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 27, 2026

Not cloying, not milky, not trying to be liked by everyone at the bake sale.

From Salon ● Mar. 5, 2026

Only when I sniffed again did I become sure of the woodland smells and cloying air.

From "Crispin: The Cross of Lead" by Avi




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