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.Definition 2025
oat
oat
English
unripe cultivated oats
oat seeds ready to be prepared as food
Noun
oat (countable and uncountable, plural oats)
- (uncountable) Widely cultivated cereal grass, typically Avena sativa.
- (countable) Any of the numerous species, varieties, or cultivars of any of several similar grain plants in genus Avena.
- The wild red oat is thought to be the ancestor of modern food oats.
- (usually as plural) The seeds of the oat, a grain, harvested as a food crop.
Derived terms
terms derived from oat
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Translations
a widely cultivated cereal grass
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seeds of the oat — see oats