grail

• IPA^(key): /ɡɹeɪɫ/
• Rhymes: -eɪl

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

grail (plural grails)

1. The Holy Grail.
2. The object of an extended or difficult quest.

   Becoming an astronaut was his grail.

From Old French grael, ultimately from Latin graduale.

grail (plural grails)

1. A book of offices in the Roman Catholic Church; a gradual.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of T. Warton to this entry?)

   • Strype

     antiphonals, missals, grails, processionals, etc.

Origin uncertain; perhaps a reduced form of gravel.

grail (uncountable)

1. (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 [...].

Compare Old French graite slender.

grail (plural grails)

1. One of the small feathers of a hawk.

• argil, glair