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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
gruel
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ And for the rest of the morning on into early afternoon, HsingHsing eats cake and bamboo and carrots and gruel.
▪ Billy coughed when the door was opened, and when he coughed he shit thin gruel.
▪ Every morning long lines formed outside, and hundreds of orphans lined up with cans to wait for the gruel.
▪ For her Christmas dinner Ellen brought her a bowl of oatmeal gruel.
▪ I would feed you with hot gruel.
▪ The consistency should be that of a thick gruel.
▪ The high-protein gruel inside is far more valuable than that.
▪ The steamy yellow gruel in the bucket splashed out on to the kitchen floor.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Gruel

Gruel \Gru"el\, n. [OF. gruel, F. gruau; of German origin; cf. OHG. gruzzi groats, G. gr["u]tze, As. gr[=u]t. See Grout.] A light, liquid food, made by boiling meal of maize, oatmeal, or flour in water or milk; thin porridge.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
gruel

late 12c., "meal or flour made of beans, lentils, etc.," from Old French gruel "fine meal," from Frankish *grut (cognate with Middle Dutch grute "coarse meal, malt;" Middle High German gruz "grain"), from PIE *ghreu- "to rub, grind" (see grit). Meaning "thin porridge or soup" is late 14c.

Wiktionary
gruel

n. A thin, watery porridge. vb. (context transative English) to exhaust; use up; disable

WordNet
gruel

n. a thin porridge (usually oatmeal or cornmeal)

Wikipedia
Gruel

Gruel is a type of food consisting of some type of cerealoat, wheat or rye flour, or rice—boiled in water or milk. It is a thinner version of porridge that may be more often drunk than eaten and may not need to be cooked. Historically, gruel has been a staple of the Western diet, especially for peasants. Gruel is often made from millet, hemp, barley or, in hard times, from chestnut flour or even the less bitter acorns of some oaks.

The importance of gruel as a form of sustenance has, historically been considered for the sick and for recently weaned children. Though its actual medical use is not proven. Hot malted milk is a form of gruel, although the manufacturers of such products as Ovaltine and Horlicks avoid calling it gruel, owing to the negative associations attached to the word in popular culture, as in Charles Dickens's novel Oliver Twist. From a literary, bourgeois, or modern point of view, gruel has often been associated with poverty. Gruel is also a colloquial expression for any watery or liquidy food of unknown character, e.g., pea soup. The word soup is derived from sop, the slice of bread which was soaked in broth or thin gruel.

Gruel (computer worm)

Gruel (also referred to by F-Secure as Fakerr) is a worm first surfaced in 2003 targeting Microsoft Windows platforms (such as Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000 and Windows XP). It spreads via email and file sharing networks.

Usage examples of "gruel".

This agent may be administered in doses of from five to ten drops, largely diluted in water or gruel.

He had been forced to relive the incident through grueling testimony, every moment of which Desai was sure had rubbed at the wound inflicted by the loss of the starship and its crew, the captain of which had also been a close friend.

Mother Sweetbread took up her quarters in Little Greece, and made him broths of game and wild herbs, and frumenty spiced with ginger, and, to quench his thirst, a gruel of barley mixed with her own sloeberry cordial.

Dusk finally set in after a grueling, motionless ten hours in the hot ghillie suit.

This was a grueling schedule for the men, but with two children to take care of, by the end of a few weeks Betty Raye was exhausted.

Chainer pointed out to Skellum that in addition to being ceremonial, the dagger was also too heavy, had runes carved clean through its blade, and was entirely useless for anything but stirring gruel.

Some of it even tasted half decent, though there was no joy to be found in the almost textureless gruel.

After spending the first night in the bustling territorial capital, they had hired the harness team and begun a grueling upcountry trek, stopping the second night at Underwood and the third night at Wheatland, before reaching Uva and turning west.

For Walder, brave when confronted by the grueling test, was holding his ground, shouting for the guards to return and aid him against the attacking tribe.

The master scrivener had not been at the table when Cerryl had eaten his gruel, and Beryal had said nothing, just urged Cerryl to eat and get on with his business.

The aborigines of central Australia, who have no written language and live in conditions of grueling hardship, have an astonishingly complete metapsychical system that rivals the insight of the most advanced mystic.

Vladimir and I had just spent another grueling three-hour session of fighting practice, trying to teach me how to put a lance through a quintain, an old plywood shield with a small hole in the center of it.

It held a shallow plate filled with a thin, shrimpy gruel, which the pantywaists apparently had been drinking.

He kept on staring at the gruel, and presently a solitary tear dropped into it with a thin, shrimpy splash.

The men chasing him were all strong swimmers preparing for a triathlon that would begin with a grueling 2.