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oat

[ ˈōt]

oat

noun

[ˈōt]

Definition of oat

1a : any of several grasses (genus Avena)
especially : a widely cultivated cereal grass (A. sativa)

b : a crop or plot of the oat
also : the seed of an oat —usually used in plural but singular or plural in construction

2 archaic : a reed instrument made of an oat straw

feel one's oats

: to act in a newly self-confident and often self-important manner

Recent Examples on the Web

//For cookie lovers who prefer to dunk, there also will be a milk bar serving oat, whole, soy, skim, chocolate and cereal milks.
— Phillip Valys, sun-sentinel.com, "Batch, the Cookie Company bringing gourmet cookies and milk bar to Flagler Village in Fort Lauderdale," 5 Aug. 2019
//Speaking for myself, shifting from milk in coffee to oat milk in coffee is super easy.
— Kate Wheeling, The New Republic, "Jonathan Safran Foer on Our Moral Obligation to Eat Better," 17 Sep. 2019
//Add to the bowl with oats along with beef, garlic, and parsley and mix to combine until everything is evenly distributed.
— Woman's Day Kitchen, Woman's Day, "Spicy Ketchup-Glazed Meatloaf," 18 Apr. 2018
//This first version will exclusively offer espresso drinks— espresso, Americano, cappuccino, and latte—with a choice of either Stumptown or Regalia beans and either dairy or oat milk.
— Kate Dwyer, Fortune, "Robot Baristas Serve Cappuccinos With Convenience," 30 Aug. 2019
//Traditional animal agriculture is looking to the lessons learned by the dairy industry, which saw cow’s milk sales dwindle by $1.1 billion last year, much of that business scooped up by alternative milks such as almond and oat.
— Laura Reiley, BostonGlobe.com, "Veggie burgers were living an idyllic existence. Then they got caught in a war over the future of meat," 26 Aug. 2019
//Traditional animal agriculture is looking to the lessons learned by the dairy industry, which saw cow’s milk sales dwindle by $1.1 billion last year, much of that business scooped up by alternative milks such as almond and oat.
— Laura Reiley, Washington Post, "Veggie burgers were living an idyllic little existence. Then they got caught in a war over the future of meat.," 25 Aug. 2019
//There’s also ample evidence that early humans went to great lengths to eat fiber-rich carbohydrates, such as oats and acorns.
— Julia Belluz, Vox, "Nearly all Americans fail to eat enough of this actual superfood," 15 July 2019
//In the morning they’d be given, like, this one woman took out a Nature Valley oat-and-honey bar.
— The New Yorker, "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the 2020 Presidential Race and Trump’s Crisis at the Border," 10 July 2019

First Known Use of oat

before the 12th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1a

History and Etymology for oat

Middle English ote "the grain of the oat plant, the plant itself," going back to Old English āte (weak feminine noun), of uncertain origin

Note: Old English āte has been compared with regional Dutch aate, oote "wild oats" (West and Zeeland Flanders), West Frisian and Groningen Dutch oat. (These contrast with Dutch haver, denoting cultivated oats, a reflex of the Common Germanic word for the grain.) Michiel de Vaan, in an addenda to the on-line etymologiebank.nl, believes that the Flanders words are semantic extensions of regional aat "food," of general Germanic origin (see eat entry 2), though this hypothesis would scarcely explain the Old English word. Jan de Vries (Nederlands Etymologisch Woordenboek, Brill, 1971) hypothesizes that the Low Country words may have been borrowed from English.