Define the word Wild oats"Wild oats" gcide "The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48"
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.
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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.
[1913 Webster]
"wild oats" wn "WordNet (r) 2.0"
wild oats
n : any of various plants of the genus Uvularia having yellowish
drooping bell-shaped flowers [syn: bellwort, merry bells]
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