gruel

That sort of bad art is thin gruel compared to really bad art: works that are ethically perverse, immoral or debauched.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 21, 2026

It became something closer to porridge, or gruel, which delighted me.

From Salon ● Jul. 14, 2026

But in terms of its actual content, the statement was pretty thin gruel, bristling with public relations-style circumlocution and vagueness.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 27, 2026

By historical standards that’s pretty thin gruel, and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell says it even might overstate job creation.

From MarketWatch ● Dec. 15, 2025

“Eat that now,” she said: “you must be hungry. Hannah says you have had nothing but some gruel since breakfast.”

From "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë

Agriculture softened our ancestors’ diets with processed gruels, stews and yogurts, and this fare led to gradually shrinking lower jaws to produce today’s overcrowded mouths.”

From Fox News ● Mar. 18, 2019

Few had ever received Red Cross packages; their guards, almost to a man, had engaged in graft which cut prison fare to watery soups, half-spoiled vegetables, and chalky gruels.

From Time Magazine Archive

As anything of that kind would have made use for Jim's coffin-handles, I had to put up with soups and gruels.

From How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 by George W. (George Wilbur) Peck

Place the sheep in a house, or any comfortable situation, bed it with straw, throw a horse-rug over it, and promote the purging by warm gruels.

From A Treatise on Sheep: The Best Means for their Improvement, General Management, and the Treatment of their Diseases. by Ambrose Blacklock

The diet should consist wholly of milk, a glass every two hours, in those with whom it agrees, and in others gruels may be substituted to some extent.

From The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) by Kenelm Winslow