How to Use gruel in a Sentence

gruel

noun
Definition of gruelnext
  • And if this is the strongest stuff that Durham has, that's pretty thin gruel.
    — Chris Cillizza, CNN, 17 Sep. 2021
  • Meals are gruel, which the nurses cart around in large enamel pails.
    — Robert Gottlieb, New York Times, 12 Dec. 2019
  • Salad and leftover gruel from the day before had been laid out.
    — Washington Post, 9 June 2018
  • The options for startups forced to raise money in down markets are so much thin gruel.
    — Kevin Kelleher, Fortune, 24 May 2022
  • The plate also serves as a lid for the bowl, with a double gasket that will keep your gruel from slopping out into a pack.
    — T. Edward Nickens, Field & Stream, 7 Apr. 2020
  • In short, this is a memoir spun from the thin gruel of musty propaganda and cherished grudges.
    — Washington Post, 11 Feb. 2022
  • The cocoon arrives in the jail cell as a stowaway, an unexpected lump in a bowl of prison gruel.
    — Laura Collins-Hughes, New York Times, 14 Jan. 2018
  • Hazan, meanwhile, only knew how to make gruel for pigs.
    — Mayukh Sen, The New Yorker, 15 Nov. 2021
  • Seavey asked of a white dog who ate its pile of meat-gruel with exceptional neatness, leaving nothing but a tidy stain on the snow.
    — Zachariah Hughes, Anchorage Daily News, 10 Mar. 2021
  • The gruel mixture, which now includes wet food, should be transitioned in as part of their diet until about five or six weeks old.
    — Dallas News, 13 Dec. 2022
  • Against the measuring stick of a global perspective, the drama of D.C. is thin gruel indeed.
    — Author: Hugh Hewitt, Alaska Dispatch News, 18 June 2017
  • The thought of buying 5 acres in Napa conjured up images of us eating cold gruel under a bare lightbulb.
    — Beth Decarbo, WSJ, 20 Nov. 2018
  • Working an absurd amount of hours, spending no money, eating gruel three times a day.
    — Jennifer Mazi, photos By Rich Sugg,, kansascity.com, 23 May 2017
  • But even allowing for the erosion of standards, this is thin gruel for both news reporting and legal claims.
    — Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review, 14 Sep. 2019
  • In one of the vessels, the types of fatty acids present, and their carbon-13 ratios, suggest that someone had mixed either human breast milk or a thin gruel made from pig fat with the livestock milk.
    — Kiona N. Smith, Ars Technica, 2 Oct. 2019
  • To signal that Zhou loved the people, he is shown working late while his aides fret about his health, and refusing a bowl of gruel because there are Chinese without enough to eat.
    — The Economist, 24 Oct. 2019
  • That’s pretty thin gruel compared with the Nasdaq initiative, suggesting that the exchange may have to fall into line now that Nasdaq has set the pace.
    — Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 1 Dec. 2020
  • Yet the Papadopoulos intelligence was thin gruel—a random comment by a drunk guy making a vague claim.
    — Kimberley A. Strassel, WSJ, 5 Apr. 2018
  • Confined to a prison in the Republic of Mordovia, she was fed gruel, lost 40 pounds and endured temperatures that plunged to 40 below zero.
    — Sam Roberts, New York Times, 13 July 2017
  • Helping keep them fed is a volunteer corps of about 80, who work two-hour shifts weighing kittens, taking notes on their eating habits and mixing gruel for those more than a month or so old.
    — Karin Brulliard, The Denver Post, 6 June 2017
  • Guards beat and sometimes killed their captives, who lived on a rice gruel that occasionally included bits of fish.
    — Sig Christenson, ExpressNews.com, 25 May 2020
  • During Ramadan, Samia Hassan often walks three miles to another Gaza neighborhood to line up for wheat gruel cooked in a large cauldron over an open fire.
    — The Christian Science Monitor, 8 June 2018
  • Having no stomachs to speak of, the carp must eat almost constantly in order to derive energy from this greenish gruel.
    — Jeff Wheelwright, Discover Magazine, 24 June 2012
  • When beginning the transition into wet foods, it is suggested to make a gruel mixture.
    — Dallas News, 13 Dec. 2022
  • Another option is to cut the gruel with sawdust, though that might make residents (aka potential workers) sick.
    — Steven Strom, Ars Technica, 24 Apr. 2018
  • Mehetabel was treating her daughter Sarah Huntington (Adriana Mazza), one of her 10 children with gruel.
    — Kitty Leshay, Courant Community, 14 June 2017
  • Conscientious (and frequently exhausted) mothers awoke at the crack of dawn to stand over a hot, wood-burning stove for hours on end, cooking and stirring gruels or mush made of barley, cracked wheat, or oats.
    — Howard Markel, Smithsonian, 28 July 2017
  • The result, at worst, is work that reinforces reactionary ideologies, and, at best, is a kind of tasteless gruel that leaves no real impression behind.
    — Reid McCarter, Wired, 4 Sep. 2021
  • In that year’s manifesto, aside from Brexit the Conservatives offered only a thin gruel of punishing reforms of things like social care and little in the way of extra spending.
    — The Economist, 19 Oct. 2019
  • My daughter was born into a life of labor: chopping blocks of meat, lugging buckets of gruel, hours of chiseling frozen poop to keep the yard clean, and of course continuing to exercise and mentally enrich the dogs.
    — Joseph Robertia, Anchorage Daily News, 1 Feb. 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'gruel.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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