01 n. A well-known cereal grass (Avena sativa), and its edible grain, used as food and fodder; -- commonly used in the plural and in a collectiv…
pl.
Oats ((ōts))
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1.
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.(Bot.)
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2.
A musical pipe made of oat straw.[Obs.]
Phrases & compounds
Animated oats —
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 —
the snow bunting; -- so called from its feeding on oats.
Oat grass —
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 —
to be conceited or self-important.
To sow one's wild oats —
to indulge in youthful dissipation.
Wild oats —
a grass (Avena fatua) much resembling oats, and by some persons supposed to be the original of cultivated oats.