means Thick, sweet, and slow-flowing like syrup — or, of tone and emotion, cloyingly sentimental.

from From 'syrup,' which trickled into English via Old French 'sirop' from Medieval Latin 'siropus,' itself borrowed from Arabic 'sharāb' meaning a drink or beverage — the same root that gives us 'sherbet' and, distantly, 'shrub.' The '-y' is the plain English suffix that turns a noun into 'having the quality of,' so 'syrupy' is literally 'drink-like' all the way down — though by the time the word picked up its figurative sense of gooey sentimentality, it had wandered far from any Arabian cup.