danthonia spicata

2 definitions found

danthonia spicata - 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.
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     2. A musical pipe made of oat straw. [Obs.] --Milton.
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     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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  Poverty \Pov"er*ty\ (p[o^]v"[~e]r*t[y^]), n. [OE. poverte, OF.
     povert['e], F. pauvret['e], fr. L. paupertas, fr. pauper
     poor. See Poor.]
     1. The quality or state of being poor or indigent; want or
        scarcity of means of subsistence; indigence; need.
        "Swathed in numblest poverty." --Keble.
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              The drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty.
                                                    --Prov. xxiii.
                                                    21.
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     2. Any deficiency of elements or resources that are needed or
        desired, or that constitute richness; as, poverty of soil;
        poverty of the blood; poverty of ideas.
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     Poverty grass (Bot.), a name given to several slender
        grasses (as Aristida dichotoma, and Danthonia spicata)
        which often spring up on old and worn-out fields.
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     Syn: Indigence; penury; beggary; need; lack; want;
          scantiness; sparingness; meagerness; jejuneness.
  
     Usage: Poverty, Indigence, Pauperism. Poverty is a
            relative term; what is poverty to a monarch, would be
            competence for a day laborer. Indigence implies
            extreme distress, and almost absolute destitution.
            Pauperism denotes entire dependence upon public
            charity, and, therefore, often a hopeless and degraded
            state.
            [1913 Webster] Powan