GNU Collaborative International Dictionary of English

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1.       
   Oat (ōt), n.; 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.
   
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   2. A musical pipe made of oat straw. [Obs.] Milton.
   
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   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.
   
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