- Wild oats
- 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, used as food and fodder; -- commonly used in
the plural and in a collective sense.
[1913 Webster]
2. A musical pipe made of oat straw. [Obs.] --Milton. [1913 Webster]
{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}, {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. [1913 Webster]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English. 2000.
