wild oats


pl n
  1. slang the indiscretions of youth, esp dissoluteness before settling down (esp in the phrase sow one's wild oats)

Words Nearby wild oats

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

How to use wild oats in a sentence

  • French voters, typically, are willing to give plenty of leeway to politicians sowing wild oats extra-conjugally.

  • You will forgive me, my dear, when I say that I think your husband has already sown a sufficiently large crop of wild oats.

  • For half a century, then, all wild oats from elsewhere usually sprouted at the Gap.

  • He had tried every game of chance and gone through all other operations collectively known as "sowing one's wild oats."

    All He Knew | John Habberton
  • In early days herds of a very large deer, called elk, fed on the wild oats and grass.

    Stories of California | Ella M. Sexton
  • This meal, or that from wild oats, was also mixed into a dough and baked on hot stones into bread.

    Stories of California | Ella M. Sexton

Other Idioms and Phrases with wild oats

wild oats

see sow one's wild oats.

The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.