Crossword Dictionary

What's The Definition Of Oat?

\Oat\ ([=o]t), n.; pl. {Oats} ([=o]ts). [OE. ote, ate, AS. [=a]ta, akin to Fries. oat. Of uncertain origin.] 1. (Bot.) A well-known cereal grass ({Avena sativa}), and its edible grain; -- 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} (Zo["o]l.), 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}, {D. sericea}, and {Arrhenatherum avenaceum}, all common in parts of the United States. {To feel one's oats}, to be conceited ro self-important. [Slang] {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.