A thin, watery porridge made by cooking oatmeal or other grain in water or milk.
From Old French 'gruel' derived from Latin 'grutum' meaning coarse grain. It appeared in English by the 13th century as a simple, cheap food for poor people and the ill.
Gruel became famous in Victorian literature as the ultimate sad breakfast—Charles Dickens' 'Oliver Twist' famously asked for more gruel, and it became a symbol of poverty and institutional food.
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