Definify.com
Webster 1913 Edition
Oat
Oat
(ōt)
, Noun.
pl.
Oats
(ōts)
. [OE.
ote
, ate
, AS. āta
, akin to Fries. oat
. Of uncertain origin.] 1.
(Bot.)
A well-known cereal grass (
Avena sativa
), and its edible grain, used as food and fodder; – commonly used in the plural and in a collective sense. 2.
A musical pipe made of oat straw.
[Obs.]
Milton.
Animated oats
or
Animal oats
(Bot.)
, A grass (
– Avena sterilis
) much like oats, but with a long spirally twisted awn which coils and uncoils with changes of moisture, and thus gives the grains an apparently automatic motion. Oat fowl
(Zool.)
, the snow bunting; – so called from its feeding on oats.
[Prov. Eng.]
– Oat grass
(Bot.)
, the name of several grasses more or less resembling oats, as
– Danthonia spicata
, Danthonia sericea
, and Arrhenatherum avenaceum
, all common in parts of the United States. To feel one’s oats
, (a)
to be conceited or self-important.
[Slang]
(b)
to feel lively and energetic.
– To sow one's wild oats
, to indulge in youthful dissipation.
Thackeray.
– Wild oats
(Bot.)
, a grass (
Avena fatua
) much resembling oats, and by some persons supposed to be the original of cultivated oats.