Source : Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

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; -- commonly used in the plural and in a
      collective sense.

   2. A musical pipe made of oat straw. [Obs.] --Milton.

   {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} (Zo["o]l.), 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.

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.

            The drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty.
                                                  --Prov. xxiii.
                                                  21.

   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.

   {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.

   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.