grail
Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Contents |
[edit] English
[edit] Pronunciation
[edit] Etymology 1
Old French graal (“cup”), from Medieval Latin gradalis.
[edit] Noun
grail (plural grails)
- The Holy Grail.
- The object of an extended or difficult quest.[1]
- Becoming an astronaut was his grail.
- GRAIL mission, an acronym for Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, a pair of NASA spacecraft sent to the moon to measure its gravity field.
[edit] Etymology 2
From Old French grael, ultimately from Latin graduale.
[edit] Noun
grail (plural grails)
- A book of offices in the Roman Catholic Church; a gradual.
[edit] Etymology 3
Origin uncertain; perhaps a reduced form of gravel.
[edit] Noun
grail (uncountable)
- (poetic) Small particles of earth; gravel.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, I.vii:
- Hereof this gentle knight vnweeting was, / And lying downe vpon the sandie graile, / Drunke of the streame, as cleare as cristall glas [...].
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, I.vii:
