Definition of OAT

Examples of oat in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web Meuer Farm: Grains, flours, oats, honey, maple syrup, meats. — Kristine M. Kierzek, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, "As restaurants close for coronavirus, farmers find ways to get food to our homes," 31 Mar. 2020 The recipe brings together rolled oats, raw sunflower seeds, walnuts, wheatgerm and dried fruit like tart cherries into a chewy, crunchy harmony. — Harmless Harvest, Bon Appétit, "Why We Can't Get Enough of this New Addition to the Yogurt Aisle," 24 Feb. 2020 If the ground isn’t covered in snow, wheat fields can be magnets for late winter bucks, as can rye, oat, triticale, or barley fields. — Gerald Almy, Field & Stream, "18 Key Strategies for Finding More Sheds," 5 Feb. 2020 That could add momentum to the shift toward oat, nut, soy and other alternative beverages for health and environmental reasons. — BostonGlobe.com, "Some Uber drivers can set their own rates," 21 Jan. 2020 Whisk together oats, flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt in a bowl. — Kate Merker And Taylor Murray, Country Living, "Oatmeal Cream Pies," 6 Jan. 2020 But while being a dairy farmer is tough, the industry isn’t exactly wringing its hands over the ascendance (pdf) of milk-like beverages made from almonds, oats, peas, bananas, cashews, yeast, and soy. — Chase Purdy, Quartz, "Plant-based milks aren’t the reason US dairies are struggling," 21 Dec. 2019 The owner of Manresa Bread in Los Gatos, Los Altos and Campbell, Ruzicka uses a small amount of brown sugar-rich cookie dough to hold a chest’s worth of loot: tart dried cherries, oats, cocoa nibs, coconut flakes and chopped chocolate. — Jessica Battilana, SFChronicle.com, "Repertoire: 3 irresistible recipes for your holiday cookie plate," 6 Dec. 2019 Almond, oat, soy, flax, coconut, cashew and other milk alternatives have led to steep declines in overall dairy milk consumption in the U.S. — Sophie Lewis, CBS News, "America's largest milk producer files for bankruptcy," 12 Nov. 2019

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'oat.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

History and Etymology for oat

Middle English ote "the grain of the oat plant, the plant itself," going back to Old English āte (weak feminine noun), of uncertain origin

Note: Old English āte has been compared with regional Dutch aate, oote "wild oats" (West and Zeeland Flanders), West Frisian and Groningen Dutch oat. (These contrast with Dutch haver, denoting cultivated oats, a reflex of the Common Germanic word for the grain.) Michiel de Vaan, in an addenda to the on-line etymologiebank.nl, believes that the Flanders words are semantic extensions of regional aat "food," of general Germanic origin (see eat entry 2), though this hypothesis would scarcely explain the Old English word. Jan de Vries (Nederlands Etymologisch Woordenboek, Brill, 1971) hypothesizes that the Low Country words may have been borrowed from English.

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