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• n  a thin porridge (usually oatmeal or cornmeal)

• She reaches into her apron and pulls out a handful of semi-rotten, bug-infested millet, which will be the basis for the gruel she will prepare for the meal that evening.
• He'd pictured small children consuming the golden gruel their mothers would make, knowing that it would sharpen their eyesight and strengthen their resistance to infectious diseases.
• They fed pork and lamb, fish, chicken and guinea-hen, eggs and milk, toast gruel, oatmeal, rolls, potatoes, vegetables.

News & Articles

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• Shakespeare troupe’s Oliver! full of delights
  There’s gruel in Oliver!, Lionel Bart’s musical based on the book Oliver Twist.
  June 13, 2013 - Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Quotes

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• Barack Obama in USA Today
  For his part, Obama said the criticism of Kagan has been "pretty thin gruel."
• Charles Dickens in AFP
  In "Oliver Twist," Dickens wrote, the orphans were given "three meals of thin gruel a day, with an onion twice a week and half a roll on Sunday."
• Howard Hampton in Canada.com
  Training for 20,000 when over 200,000 have lost their job is pretty thin gruel,Hampton said. "What happens to the other 180,000?"