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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

gruel.

A thin, watery porridge, formerly eaten primarily by the poor and the ill.

5 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈɡɹuːəl//ɡɹuːl/also/ɡɹʊəl/
  1. A thin, watery porridge, formerly eaten primarily by the poor and the ill.

    countable · uncountable
  2. Punishment.

    countable · uncountable
  3. Something that lacks substance.

    countable · uncountable
    thin gruel
  4. Sentimental poetry.

    US · countable · obsolete · slang · uncountable
  5. Semen.

    UK · countable · slang · uncountable
Where this word comes from

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.

verb
  1. To exhaust, use up, disable.

    transitive
  2. To punish.

    transitive
  3. Ejaculate.

    UK · slang
Where this word comes from

From the noun above.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.