• cloy •
Pronunciation: kloy • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Verb
Meaning: 1. To be too rich or sweet. 2. To jade, to provide with too much of something pleasant.
Notes: Today's still Good Word is currently used almost exclusively in its adjectival and adverbal forms, cloying and cloyingly. The common noun is cloyingness, but Shakespeare used cloyment in Twelfth Night (1601): "That suffer surfeit, cloyment, and revolt." There is also an odd negative adjective, cloyless, as in "cloyless dark chocolate truffles", not to be confused with clueless.
In Play: Of course, you will most often hear the adjective from today's Good Word: "She thought the cloying smell of lilies inappropriate for a first date." However, do not forget the verb underlying the adjective: "Cloyed by too much success, Seamus Allgood's life began to drift far off its original course."
Word History: This Good Word is a clipping of obsolete accloy "to clog (up)" from Old French encloer "to drive a nail into", created from clou "nail". The French verb comes from Medieval Latin inclavare, comprising in "in" + clavare "to nail", a verb derived from clavus "nail, peg". Clavus is also related to clavis "key", found in clavicle, clavichord, and the noun, conclave, the group that chooses popes behind locked doors. The original word came to the Germanic languages as German schliessen "to close" and English slot, apparently from the sense of a hole for a peg of some kind.
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Which bring us back to your original question above, did they really nail the door shut on the Cardinals way back when? Let's face it, Yale locks and such haven't been around for all that long. Anyone out there care to dive in and do some research on that one and let us know? I admit to being too lazy at the moment.And the papal election group is called the "conclave".
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