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

Prisoners on kitchen detail lugged in great buckets of gruel made of wheat and peas, tasteless but nourishing.

From "The Hiding Place" by Corrie ten Boom

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

She raised her hand and made the sign of the Cross between herself and that disappearing speck, then she turned and followed old Anita carrying gruels to that dim south room.

From Tharon of Lost Valley by Frank Tenney Johnson

The diet should be liquid: milk, broths, and gruels.

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

Liquid or Fluid Diet.—Consisting of milk, nutrient and other palatable beverages, broths, and thin gruels.

From Dietetics for Nurses by Fairfax T. Proudfit