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Webster 1913 Edition


Cloy

Cloy

(kloi)
,
Verb.
T.
[
imp. & p. p.
Cloyed
(kloid)
;
p. pr. & vb. n.
Cloying
.]
[OE.
cloer
to nail up, F.
clouer
, fr. OF.
clo
nail, F.
clou
, fr. L.
clavus
nail. Cf. 3d
Clove
.]
1.
To fill or choke up; to stop up; to clog.
[Obs.]
The duke’s purpose was to have
cloyed
the harbor by sinking ships, laden with stones.
Speed.
2.
To glut, or satisfy, as the appetite; to satiate; to fill to loathing; to surfeit.
[Who can]
cloy
the hungry edge of appetite
By bare imagination of a feast?
Shakespeare
He sometimes
cloys
his readers instead of satisfying.
Dryden.
3.
To penetrate or pierce; to wound.
Which, with his cruel tusk, him deadly
cloyed
.
Spenser.
He never shod horse but he
cloyed
him.
Bacon.
4.
To spike, as a cannon.
[Obs.]
Johnson.
5.
To stroke with a claw.
[Obs.]
Shak.

Webster 1828 Edition


Cloy

CLOY

, v.t.
1.
Strictly, to fill; to glut. Hence, to satisfy, as the appetite; to satiate. And as the appetite when satisfied rejects additional food, hence, to fill to lothing; to surfeit.
Who can cloy the hungry edge of appetite
By bare imagination of a feast?
2.
To spike up a gun; to drive a spike into the vent.
3.
In farriery, to prick a horse in shoeing.
[In the two latter senses, I believe the word is little used, and not at all in America.]

Definition 2024


cloy

cloy

English

Verb

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.
    • 1898, Winston Churchill, chapter 3, in The Celebrity:
      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.

(Can we add an example for this sense?)

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