To Cloy. v.a. [enclouer, Fr. To nail up; to stop up.]
- To satiate; to sate; to fill beyond desire; to surfeit; to fill to loathing.
The length of those speeches had not cloyed Pyrocles, though he were very impatient of long deliberations. Sidney.
The very creed of Athanasius, and that sacred hymn of glory, are now reckoned as superfluities, which we must in any case pare away, lest we cloy God with too much service. Hooker, b. v. sect. 42.
Who can cloy the hungry edge of appetite,
By bare imagination of a feast? Shakeps. Richard II.Continually varying the same sense, and taking up what he had more than enough inculcated before, he sometimes cloys his readers instead of satisfying them. Dryden.
Whose little store her well-taught mind does please,
Nor pinch'd with want, nor cloy'd with wanton ease. Roscom.Intemperance in eating and drinking, instead of delighting and satisfying nature, doth but load and cloy it. Tillotson.
Settle, cloy'd with custard and with praise,
Is gather'd to the dull of ancient days. Pope's Dunciad. - It seems to have, in the following passage, another sense: perhaps to strike the beak together.
His royal bird
Prunes the immortal wings, and cloys his beak,
As when his god is pleas'd. Shakesp. Cymbeline. - To nail up guns, by striking a spike into the touch-hole.
