oat
/ˈoʊ̯t/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.90 in modern English
3
Scrabble Score
3
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Any of the numerous species, varieties, or cultivars of any of several similar grain plants in genus Avena.
Countable
noun
The seeds of the oat, a grain, harvested as a food crop and for animal feed.
Countable; Uncountable
prep_phrase
Alternative letter-case form of OAT.
prep_phrase
Example Sentences
- "The oat stalks made good straw."
- "The main forms of oat are meal and bran."
- "World trade in oat is increasing."
- "The wild red oat is thought to be the ancestor of modern food oats."
- "[…]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."
- "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."
Etymology
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”)
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈoʊ̯t/
- British English: /ˈəʊt/