Oat n.; pl. Oats
 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.
 2. A musical pipe made of oat straw. [Obs.]
 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.

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