gruel
gruel Lexical Profile
gruel Game Scores & Validity
• noun
A thin liquid dish of oatmeal or other meal boiled in water or milk, historically associated with rations for invalids or the poor.
"The orphans in the Victorian workhouse were fed a meager bowl of watery gruel each morning."
• verb
To exhaust, wear out, or subject to a severe trial (now rare except in the participial adjective 'grueling').
"The steep uphill climb grueled the horses before the halfway mark."
• Rhymes for gruel
• Nearby Words
Word Origin & Etymology
Borrowed from Old French 'gruel' (coarse meal or porridge), from Medieval Latin 'grutellum', a diminutive of Frankish '*grut' (coarse grain), which is also the root of the English word 'grout'. The modern adjective 'grueling' arose in the 19th century from the slang expression 'to get one's gruel', meaning to receive a severe punishment or exhausting ordeal.