英语词汇sow one-s wild oats的起源、历史背景-英语词源词典

sow one’s wild oats. The wild oat (Avena fatua) is a common tall plant that looks like its relative the cereal plant oat, but is really a pernicious weed that infests the planting fields of Eu- rope and is difficult to eradicate. About all wild oats, or oat grass, have ever been used for is in making hygrometers, in- struments that measure the humidity in the air, the plant’s long twisted awn, or beard, readily absorbing moisture. The wild oat’s uselessness has been known since ancient times and for al- most as long we have had the expression to sow wild oats, “to conduct oneself foolishly,” to sow weedseed instead of good grain. The expression has been traced back to the Roman comic Plautus in 194 b.c. and was probably used before him. It usually refers to a young man frittering his time away in fruitless dissi- pation, or to the prolific sexual activities of a young man, and is almost always said indulgently of the young. Rarely, the expres- sion is used in the singular, with a prudish young man who sows “his one wild oat.” In the 16th and 17th centuries dissolute or wild young men were called wild oats.

词汇	sow one-s wild oats
词源	sow one’s wild oats. The wild oat (Avena fatua) is a common tall plant that looks like its relative the cereal plant oat, but is really a pernicious weed that infests the planting fields of Eu- rope and is difficult to eradicate. About all wild oats, or oat grass, have ever been used for is in making hygrometers, in- struments that measure the humidity in the air, the plant’s long twisted awn, or beard, readily absorbing moisture. The wild oat’s uselessness has been known since ancient times and for al- most as long we have had the expression to sow wild oats, “to conduct oneself foolishly,” to sow weedseed instead of good grain. The expression has been traced back to the Roman comic Plautus in 194 b.c. and was probably used before him. It usually refers to a young man frittering his time away in fruitless dissi- pation, or to the prolific sexual activities of a young man, and is almost always said indulgently of the young. Rarely, the expres- sion is used in the singular, with a prudish young man who sows “his one wild oat.” In the 16th and 17th centuries dissolute or wild young men were called wild oats.
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