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Fulsome vs Cloying - What's the difference?

fulsome | cloying |

As adjectives the difference between fulsome and cloying

is that fulsome is offensive to good taste, tactless, overzealous, excessive while cloying is unpleasantly excessive.

As a verb cloying is

present participle of lang=en.

fulsome

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Offensive to good taste, tactless, overzealous, excessive.
  • *
    • I immediately stripped myself stark naked, and went down softly into the stream. It happened that a young female YAHOO, standing behind a bank, saw the whole proceeding, and inflamed by desire . . . embraced me after a most fulsome manner.
  • * 1820 , , The Monastery , ch. 35:
    • You will hear the advanced enfans perdus , as the French call them, and so they are indeed, namely, children of the fall, singing unclean and fulsome ballads of sin and harlotrie.
  • Excessively flattering (connoting insincerity).
  • * 1889 , , A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court , ch. 34:
    • And by hideous contrast, a redundant orator was making a speech to another gathering not thirty steps away, in fulsome laudation of "our glorious British liberties!"
  • * 1922 , , Ulysses , Episode 15—Circe:
    • Mrs. Bellingham: He addressed me in several handwritings with fulsome compliments as a Venus in furs.
  • Abundant, copious.
    • The fulsome thanks of the war-torn nation lifted our weary spirits.
  • Fully developed, mature.
    • Her fulsome timbre resonated throughout the hall.

    Usage notes

    * Common usage tends toward the negative connotation, and using fulsome in the sense of abundant'', ''copious'', or ''mature may lead to confusion without contextual prompts.

    Synonyms

    * (offensive) gross * profuse * (excessively flattering) effusive, unctuous

    Derived terms

    * (l) * (l) * (l)

    cloying

    English

    Verb

    (head)

    • Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Unpleasantly excessive.
    • The cloying fondness she displayed was what, in the end, drove me away.
  • * August 16 2014 , Daniel Taylor, " Swansea upstage Manchester United in Louis van Gaal’s Premier League bow," guardian.co.uk :
    • It was a cloying sense of deja vu attached to the team that finished seventh last season, 22 points off the top and drastically in need of some more dynamism.
  • Excessively sweet.

    • Synonyms

    * (unpleasantly excessive) exaggerated * (excessively sweet) syrupy, treacly

    Derived terms

    * cloyingly