cold gruel
Dated British slang for something thoroughly unpleasant or disagreeable — a situation or experience as unsatisfying and miserable as cold, congealed porridge.
Definitions
Dated British slang for something thoroughly unpleasant or disagreeable — a situation or experience as unsatisfying and miserable as cold, congealed porridge. The phrase uses the poverty-associated image of gruel (thin, cheap porridge) at its worst (cold) as a metaphor for something utterly grim.
Being assigned to the night shift over Christmas was cold gruel for everyone on the team.
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(UK, slang, dated) ; an unpleasant experience.
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Other words near "cold gruel" (C)
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Semantically related
- give someone his gruel72%
(UK, slang, obsolete) To kill or trounce someone.
- cold coffee68%
(UK, slang, dated) ; an unpleasant experience.
- porridge64%
(British, slang, uncountable) A prison sentence.
- cold cook63%
Old British slang for an undertaker or funeral director. The dark humor of the term is hard to miss — a 'cold cook' prepares bodies that are already cold rather than food. It's the kind of grim, wry nickname that working-class British slang excelled at producing. While largely dated now, it's the sort of phrase you'd encounter in Victorian-era texts, old crime fiction, or historical slang dictionaries.