avena sativa

3 definitions found

avena sativa - Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 :

  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, used as food and fodder; -- commonly used in
        the plural and in a collective sense.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     2. A musical pipe made of oat straw. [Obs.] --Milton.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     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.
        [1913 Webster]

  Avena \A*ve"na\, n. [L.] (Bot.)
     A genus of grasses, including the common oat (Avena sativa
     ); the oat grasses.
     [1913 Webster]

avena sativa - WordNet (r) 2.1 (2005) :

  Avena sativa
      n 1: widely cultivated in temperate regions for its edible
           grains [syn: cereal oat, Avena sativa]