GRUEL
What does "GRUEL" mean?
A thin porridge made by boiling oatmeal or another grain in water or milk.
Meanings
- A watery cooked cereal, historically a food of the poor or the sick. The orphans were given a single bowl of gruel each evening.
Did you know?
- Gruel owes much of its fame to Charles Dickens's 'Oliver Twist' (1838), where the workhouse boy's bowl of it sets up the most famous request in English literature: 'Please, sir, I want some more.'
Word origin
From Old French 'gruel' meaning groats or meal, from a Germanic root; the same family gives us 'grueling', from the idea of being worn down as if subjected to gruel.
Remember it
GRUEL is one letter from CRUEL - which is exactly how it felt to eat it every day.
A little poem
Grey in the bowl, grey in the room,
a spoon scrapes a wish around the rim-
more, the boy says, and the world goes still.
tercet
Wordplay
- Why was the porridge so harsh to the orphan? It was downright g-r-u-e-l.
What it teaches
Gruel teaches a hard arithmetic: the less there is to share, the more a second helping costs.
Quick facts
What does GRUEL mean?
A thin porridge made by boiling oatmeal or another grain in water or milk.
Is GRUEL a valid word?
Yes — GRUEL is one of the answer words in Wordul, the daily word game.
How many letters is GRUEL?
GRUEL has 5 letters and 1 syllable.
Where does GRUEL come from?
From Old French 'gruel' meaning groats or meal, from a Germanic root; the same family gives us 'grueling', from the idea of being worn down as if subjected to gruel.
What can GRUEL teach us?
Gruel teaches a hard arithmetic: the less there is to share, the more a second helping costs.
How players do
Be the first to solve it.