grail

See also: GRAIL

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɡɹeɪl/

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪl

Etymology 1

From Middle English graal, greal, from Old French graal, greal (“cup”), from Medieval Latin gradalis, possibly corrupted over time from Latin crater (“bowl”).

Noun

grail (plural grails)

1. The Holy Grail.
   • 1989, 1:06:54 from the start, in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade‎^[1] (Action-Adventure), spoken by Henry Jones, Sr. (Sean Connery), →OCLC:

     The quest for the Grail is not archeology. It's a race against evil. If it is captured by the Nazis, the armies of darkness will march all over the face of the earth. Do you understand me?

2. Something eagerly sought or quested for.

   Becoming an astronaut was his grail.

   • 2002, Zadie Smith, The Autograph Man, Penguin Books (2003), page 214:

     How many of them had found the item they dreamt of, their personal grails?

Related terms

• Sangrail

Etymology 2

From Middle English grayel, from Old French grael, ultimately from Latin graduale. Doublet of gradual.

Noun

grail (plural grails)

1. A book of offices in the Roman Catholic Church; a gradual.
   • 1694, John Strype, the Memorials of Thomas Cranmer:

     antiphonals, missals, grails, processionals, etc.

Etymology 3

Uncertain; perhaps a reduced form of gravel.

Noun

grail (uncountable)

1. (poetic) Small particles of earth; gravel.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book I, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     Hereof this gentle knight vnweeting was, / And lying downe vpon the sandie graile, / Drunke of the streame, as cleare as cristall glas [...].

Etymology 4

Compare Old French graite slender.

Noun

grail (plural grails)

1. One of the small feathers of a hawk.

Anagrams

• argil, glair