wild oats
wild oats Lexical Profile
• noun
Youthful indiscretions, excesses, or reckless behaviors, often of a frivolous or sexual nature, engaged in before a person adopts a mature and settled lifestyle.
"After spending his early twenties sowing his wild oats across Europe, he eventually returned home to establish a serious legal career."
Any of several uncultivated grasses of the genus Avena (such as Avena fatua), native to Eurasia, which frequently grow as persistent agricultural weeds in cultivated cereal fields.
"The farmer employed a new crop rotation strategy to prevent wild oats from choking out the wheat harvest."
Word Nuance & Usage
The figurative sense of youthful indiscretion is strictly collocational and almost exclusively appears as the direct object in the idiomatic phrase 'sow one's wild oats'.
• Nearby Words
Word Origin & Etymology
The literal term refers to uncultivated species of oat grasses that act as persistent agricultural weeds. The figurative usage, recorded in the mid-16th century, stems from the agrarian metaphor of planting a useless weed instead of a productive crop, symbolizing the foolish or unprofitable recklessness of youth.