Cloyen

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Having been filled to excess until something pleasant has become sickening or tiresome
2. Made weary or repelled by too much of something that was once enjoyable and rich
3. Surfeited with sweetness or abundance until the appetite for it has been completely dulled

Etymology: Cloyen is the old past participle of "cloy," and its history runs through a word that once meant something quite different. "Cloy" comes from the Middle English "accloyen," which was a shortened form of the Old French "encloer," meaning to nail or to hammer in a spike. The idea was of driving a nail into something, and by extension of blocking or obstructing a passage. Early English uses kept that sense of clogging or hindering, and only later did the word come to describe being stuffed to the point of disgust. The shift from physical obstruction to satiety happened because a body crammed with rich food feels blocked up in much the same way a passage is blocked. Over time the sense narrowed to appetite, so that a person offered too much sweetness no longer wants it at all. Cloyen itself is the archaic past participle, a form that survives mainly in older writing and poetry. Modern English uses "cloyed" for the same role, so "cloyen" reads as a deliberate touch of antiquity.