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 (Zoöl.), 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, D. sericea,
and Arrhenatherum avenaceum, all common in parts of the United States.
-- To feel one's oats, to be conceited ro self-important. [Slang] -- 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.
Oat"cake (?), n. A cake made of oatmeal.
Oat"en (?), a. 1. Consisting of an oat straw or stem; as, an oaten
pipe. Milton.