Hypertext Webster Gateway: "Oat"

From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) (web1913)

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; -- commonly used in the plural and in a
collective sense.

2. A musical pipe made of oat straw. [Obs.] --Milton.

{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}, {D. sericea}, and
{Arrhenatherum avenaceum}, all common in parts of the
United States.

{To feel one's oats}, to be conceited ro self-important.
[Slang]

{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.

From WordNet (r) 1.7 (wn)

oat
n 1: annual grass of Europe and North Africa; grains used as food
and fodder (referred to primarily in the plural: `oats')
2: seed of the annual grass Avena sativa (spoken of primarily
in the plural as `oats')

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