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oat

Pronunciation: /əʊt/

Translate oat | into French | into German | into Spanish
Definition of oat

noun

  • 1an Old World cereal plant with a loose, branched cluster of florets, cultivated in cool climates and widely used for animal feed.
    • Avena sativa, family Gramineae
  • (oats) the grain yielded by the oat plant, used as food: oats are great health value [with modifier]:porridge oats
  • used in names of wild grasses related to the cultivated oat, e.g. wild oat.
  • 2 literary an oat stem used as a musical pipe by shepherds, especially in pastoral or bucolic poetry.

Phrases

feel one's oats

North American informal feel lively and energetic: she’s in the pink and feeling her oats

get one's oats

British informal have sexual intercourse.

sow one's wild oats

go through a period of wild or promiscuous behaviour while young: he sowed his wild oats before settling down

Derivatives

oaten

adjective ( archaic)

oaty

adjective (oatier, oatiest)

Origin:

Old English āte, plural ātan, of unknown origin. Unlike other names of cereals (such as wheat, barley, etc.), oat is not a mass noun and may originally have denoted the individual grain, which may imply that oats were eaten in grains and not as meal

oat in other Oxford dictionaries

Definition of oat in the US English dictionary

Nearby words

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