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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

oat.

Widely cultivated cereal grass, typically Avena sativa.

3 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈəʊt/Received-Pronunciation/ˈɵ̞ʊt/Received-Pronunciation/ˈoʊ̯t/Canada, General-American/ˈɔʊ̯t/Canada, General-American

  1. Widely cultivated cereal grass, typically Avena sativa.

    uncountable
    The oat stalks made good straw.
    The main forms of oat are meal and bran.

  2. Any of the numerous species, varieties, or cultivars of any of several similar grain plants in genus Avena.

    countable
    The wild red oat is thought to be the ancestor of modern food oats.

  3. The seeds of the oat, a grain, harvested as a food crop and for animal feed.

    countable · uncountable · usually

  4. A simple musical pipe made of oat-straw.

    countable · uncountable

  5. The tiniest amount; a whit or jot.

    countable · uncountable
Where this word comes from

Inherited from Middle English ote, from Old English āte, from Proto-West Germanic *aitā, from Proto-Germanic *aitǭ (“swelling; gland; nodule”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁eyd- (“to swell”). See English atter (“poison”). Cognates * Germanic: cognate with Scots ait (“oat”), West Frisian oat (“wild oat”), Dutch oot, aat (“wild oat”), Saterland Frisian Aate (“pea”), German Low German Aat (“oat”), obsolete Luxembourgish Otz (“oat”). 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”) * 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”)

prep_phrase

  1. Alternative letter-case form of OAT.

    alt-of
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.