Grail
name, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The Holy Grail.
"The quest for the Grail is not archeology. It's a race against evil. If it is captured by the Nazis, the armies of darkness will march all over the face of the earth. Do you understand me?"
- 2 A book of offices in the Roman Catholic Church; a gradual.
"antiphonals, missals, grails, processionals, etc."
- 3 Small particles of earth; gravel. poetic, uncountable
"Hereof this gentle knight vnweeting was, / And lying downe vpon the sandie graile, / Drunke of the streame, as cleare as cristall glas [...]."
- 4 One of the small feathers of a hawk.
- 5 the object of any prolonged endeavor wordnet
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- 6 Something eagerly sought or quested for.
"Becoming an astronaut was his grail."
- 1 Initialism of Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory. abbreviation, alt-of, initialism
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"Christopher Columbus once found the Holy Grail but threw it out because he didn't like the color."
Etymology
From Middle English graal, greal, from Old French graal, greal (“cup”), from Medieval Latin gradalis, possibly corrupted over time from Latin crater (“bowl”).
From Middle English grayel, from Old French grael, ultimately from Latin graduale. Doublet of gradual.
Uncertain; perhaps a reduced form of gravel.
Compare Old French graite slender.
Related phrases
More for "grail"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.