oatmeal

Etymology

It is formed from English oat + meal.^[2][3][4][5] The earliest form is ote-mele, from ote and mele.^[6][7][8] The first part is from Old English āte, plural ātan, a word of uncertain origin;^[8] the second is from Old English melu,^[8] from Proto-Germanic *melwą (“meal, flour”),^[9] related to verbs for grinding and traced to Proto-Indo-European *mele- (“to crush, grind”).^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Meal made by grinding oats: 1381, in a collection of cookery recipes, the Diuersa Servicia.^[2] The MED defines the Middle English word as the coarsely ground meal of oats, or groats, and records it in phrases for a plaster and a pottage made with it.^[6] Etymonline dates it to the late 14th century.^[8]

Semantic evolution

Johnson (1755) defined it as flour made by grinding oats.^[10] In the 16th and 17th centuries the proverb all the world is oatmeal meant that life is all plenty and pleasure,^[2] and in the 1630s an oatmeal was a riotous young man, a word of uncertain origin found in Dekker and Ford.^[2][11] In American use from 1873 it came to mean the porridge made from the meal as well as the meal itself.^[2][3] As the name of a greyish-fawn colour flecked with brown it dates from 1927 (as an adjective from 1885),^[2] and since 1880 it has named fabrics with a grained, speckled look.^[2] In East Anglia oatmeal was used for oats that were husked and split but not ground.^[12]

Timeline

• 1381 – meal of ground oats.^[2]
• 1542 – the proverb all the world is oatmeal (obsolete by 1673).^[2]
• c. 1639 – slang, a riotous young man (obsolete).^[2][11]
• 1755 – Johnson defines it as flour made by grinding oats.^[10]
• 1873 – originally in the US, porridge made from oatmeal.^[2]
• 1880 – as an adjective, of fabrics with a grained, speckled look.^[2]
• 1885 – of the colour of oatmeal.^[2]
• 1927 – noun, a greyish-fawn colour.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. Meal made by grinding oats with the husks removed, used for porridge and oatcakes.^[13][7][2]
2. Rolled oats.^[7]
3. (chiefly US) Porridge made from ground or rolled oats.^[7][2][3]
4. A greyish-yellow or greyish-fawn colour: an oatmeal jumper.^[13][7][2]
5. A fabric with a rough, speckled texture.^[7][2]

Related words

• oat
• meal
• groats

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
6. ^ a b Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
7. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
10. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
11. ^ a b Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
12. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
13. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins