Large Fierce Mammal

I had cause to use the word “cloying” today in a poem I’m working on. You’ll notice I didn’t say “writing” because that would imply some level of control.

My intention was to convey the conventional meaning as defined by Oxford, that being an influence that will, “Disgust or sicken (someone) with an excess of sweetness, richness, or sentiment,” while still embracing the Late Middle English “… shortening of obsolete accloy ‘stop up, choke’, from Old French encloyer ‘drive a nail into’, from medieval Latin inclavare, from clavus ‘a nail’.”

Being nothing if not thorough, I never use a word in its accepted application without also verifying its exposure in such august publications as The Devil’s Dictionary and the Urban Dictionary because, Gods know, I do like me some variety.

In the former, the word was conspicuously absent from the void lying between “Clove” —

CLOVE, n. A small spice that lures a man away from his girl between the acts at a theater or the dances at a ball. A man who has the clove-habit will leave a very nice girl to get a very poor clove.

and “Club” —

CLUB, n. An association of men for purposes of drunkenness, gluttony, unholy hilarity, murder, sacrilege and the slandering of mothers, wives and sisters.
For this definition I am indebted to several estimable ladies who have the best means of information, their husbands being members of several clubs.

but the latter offered this:

The deathbed scenes in the novels of Dickens are famously cloying: as Oscar Wilde said, “One would need a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.”

That works too.