Gruel
noun, verb, slang ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A thin, watery porridge, formerly eaten primarily by the poor and the ill. countable, uncountable
"[…]her own cook at South End, a young woman hired for the time, who never had been able to understand what she meant by a basin of nice smooth gruel, thin, but not too thin."
- 2 a thin porridge (usually oatmeal or cornmeal) wordnet
- 3 Punishment. countable, uncountable
- 4 Something that lacks substance. countable, uncountable
"thin gruel"
- 5 Sentimental poetry. US, countable, obsolete, slang, uncountable
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- 6 Semen. British, countable, slang, uncountable
- 1 To exhaust, use up, disable. transitive
- 2 To punish. transitive
- 3 Ejaculate. British, slang
Example
More examples"When he was young, he was so poor that he virtually had to live on gruel."
Etymology
From Middle English gruel, gruwel, greuel, growel (“meal or flour made from beans, lentils, etc.”), from Old French gruel (“coarse meal; > French gruau”), from Medieval Latin grutellum, diminutive of Medieval Latin grutum (“flour; meal”), from a Germanic source, likely Old English grūt (“meal; grout”) or perhaps Frankish *grūt; both from Proto-Germanic *grūtiz (“ground material; grit”). Compare Dutch gruit, Middle Low German grūt, Middle High German grūz, German Grütze (“grout”). Related also to English groats, grit.
From the noun above.
Related phrases
More for "gruel"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.