oat

plural oats

1. uncountableWidely cultivated cereal grass, typically Avena sativa.

   The oat stalks made good straw.

   2 more examples

   The main forms of oat are meal and bran.

   World trade in oat is increasing.

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

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

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

   […]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.

   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

   1 more example

   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.

   1991, Cornelia M. Parkinson, Cooking with Oats: Oat Bran, Oatmeal, and More, Storey Publishing, →ISBN, page 2

4. countableuncountableA simple musical pipe made of oat-straw.
5. countableuncountableThe tiniest amount; a whit or jot.

   Few of them care an oat for the niceties of the arrow sport, but for the young lords that may be on a hunt!

   1994, Susan King, The Black Thorne's Rose, page 21

1. Alternative letter-case form of OAT.

alternative oat

1. InternetabbreviationinitialismInitialism of of all time.

alternative oat

1. abbreviationuncountablemedicineAbbreviation of oligoasthenoteratozoospermia.