oat
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: enpr: ōt
ipa: /əʊt/
ipa: /oʊt/
homophone: ot-
rhymes: -əʊt
Forms: form: oats
Etymology: Inherited from Middle English ote, from Old English āte, from Proto-Germanic *aitǭ (“swelling; gland; nodule”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁eyd- (“to swell”). See English atter.
Cognates
Germanic: cognate with Scots ait (“oat”), Dutch oot, aat (“oat”), Saterland Frisian Aate (“pea”), German Low German Aat ‘oat’, obsolete Luxembourgish Otz ‘oat’, Icelandic át ‘feed, fodder’. Further related to Icelandic eitill (“nodule”), Norwegian Bokmål eitel (“knot, gland”), Norwegian Nynorsk eitel (“knot, gland”), Old High German eiz (“abscess”) (German Eiter (“pus”), Eiß (“ulcer”)), Dutch etter (“pus”), Saterland Frisian eitel (“fast, raging”), Old Norse eitill (“nodule”), West Frisian iete
Indo-European: Latin aemidus (“swollen, protuberant”), Old Church Slavonic ꙗдъ (jadŭ, “poison”), Ancient Greek οἰδέω (oidéō, “to swell”), Albanian ënjt (“to swell, inflame”), Old Armenian այտնում (aytnum, “to swell”), այտ (ayt, “cheek”), Sanskrit इन्दु (índu, “water drop”)
Senses: examples: text: The oat stalks made good straw.
text: The main forms of oat are meal and bran.
text: World trade in oat is increasing.
glosses: Widely cultivated cereal grass, typically Avena sativa.
examples: text: The wild red oat is thought to be the ancestor of modern food oats.
glosses: Any of the numerous species, varieties, or cultivars of any of several similar grain plants in genus Avena.
examples: text: […]I could munch your good dry Oates. Me-thinkes I haue a great deſire to a bottle of hay: good hay, ſweete hay hath no fellow.
ref: c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “A Midsommer Nights Dreame”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene i], page 157, column 1:
text: The point is, except in Scotland, people eat comparatively few oats. Scotland's another story, though you'll have to decide how seriously to take it. The way the story goes is that in eastern Scotland, the unmarried plowmen didn't eat anything but oats and milk, except for an occasional potato.
ref: 1991, Cornelia M. Parkinson, Cooking with Oats: Oat Bran, Oatmeal, and More, Storey Publishing, →ISBN, page 2:
glosses: The seeds of the oat, a grain, harvested as a food crop and for animal feed.
raw_tags: as plural
glosses: A simple musical pipe made of oat-straw.
examples: text: Few of them care an oat for the niceties of the arrow sport, but for the young lords that may be on a hunt!
ref: 1994, Susan King, The Black Thorne's Rose, page 21:
glosses: The tiniest amount; a whit or jot.
Derived terms: animated oat
black oat
black oat grass
common wild oat
feel one's oats
naked oat
oatbread
oat burner
oat-burner
oatcake
oat cell
oaten
oater
oatflake
oatgrass
oat grass
oatie
oatlage
oatless
oatlike
oat-like
oatmeal
oat milk
oat opera
oat soda
oatstraw
oaty
off one's oats
Polish oat
potato oat
proats
rolled oats
sow one's oats
sow one's wild oats
sow wild oats
sterile oat
wild oat
wild red oat
Related terms: bran