Dictionary

wild oats en · NOUN

Meanings

1. (plural, plural-only) Oats of non-cultivated species of Avena, a genus of grasses.
2. (plural, plural-only) Chasmanthium latifolium, a grass, Indian woodoats
3. (plural, plural-only) Species of Uvularia, the bellworts.
4. (plural, plural-only) Species of Aegilops, goatgrass.
5. (dated, euphemistic, plural, plural-only, slang) Sexual intercourse outside of marriage.
   • You had a harem instinct when you were young. You sowed your wild oats. So did you, Mater. 1916, Joseph Noel, “Wild Oats”, in Three plays and a curtain raiser, page 138:
   • Youths would better look at the specimens of disease taken by the surgeon from innocent wives, and see how they tally with the “wild oats” of some husband’s youth before they begin sowing their own. ¶ There are thousands of syphilitics and tens of thousands of gonorrheics in every large city in the world. Add to these the other wild oats products, crime, pauperism, prostitution, inebriety and insanity 1912, G. Frank Lydston, The lie of the wild oats, page 3:
   • To allay our fears, we cracked the occasional joke about free love and began half-seriously calling it the Wild Oats Project. 2015, Robin Rinaldi, The Wild Oats Project: One Woman's Midlife Quest for Passion at any Cost, page 49:
6. (archaic, plural, plural-only) A rake.

Forms

Deriveds

sow one's wild oats · slender wild oat · common wild oat · winter wild oat

Translations (15)

gl cugula (non-cultivated oats) · ota یابان یولافی (non-cultivated oats) · fi nuokkutähkä (Chasmanthium latifolium) · gl avea louca (non-cultivated oats) · alt кара сула (non-cultivated oats) · hu vadzab (non-cultivated oats) · pl dziki owies (non-cultivated oats) · ru овёс пусто́й (non-cultivated oats) · ru овсю́г (non-cultivated oats) · az yulafca (non-cultivated oats) · et tuulekaer (non-cultivated oats) · pl obiedka szerokolistna (Chasmanthium latifolium) · fi hukkakaura (non-cultivated oats) · tr yaban yulafı (non-cultivated oats) · fi villikaura (non-cultivated oats)