Wild oats : n : any of various plants of the genus Uvularia having yellowish
drooping bell-shaped flowers [syn: bellwort, merry
bells]
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
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">Wild oats (Bot.), a grass ({Avena fatua) much resembling
oats, and by some persons supposed to be the original of
cultivated oats.
