oat-burner

English

Alternative forms

• oat burner

Noun

oat-burner (plural oat-burners)

1. A horse.
   • 2008, Sharon Brondos, White Lightning, →ISBN, page 60:

     He's not just your basic oat-burner who runs because he's taught to.

   • 2011, John Sayles, A Moment in the Sun, →ISBN:

     “I'd like to see his face when Taral puts the collar on that oat-burner in the stretch,” he says. “That boy can make a horse run backwards.”

   • 2013, Gordon Korman, On the Run #5: Public Enemies, →ISBN:

     We'll never make hundreds of miles on this oat-burner. He'll still be close enough to his own farm that someone will recognize him eventually.

2. A film, radio or television show, or theatrical production set in the Old West; horse opera.
   • 1994, Guy LeBow, Watch Your Cleavage, Check Your Zipper!, →ISBN, page 3:

     Even though we were dead serious about this oat-burner, the home audiences probably collapsed when, along with the Old West dialogue and scenes, they heard the honking and screeching noises of automobiles or the roaring of airplanes overhead.

   • 1996 March-April, John Brown, “Don't Shoot, Pastor”, in American Cowboy, volume 2, number 6, page 30:

     Here are the two lead sentences in the liner notes for a recently released western, an oat-burner just out on video called Covenant Rider.

   • 1998, Ward Churchill, Fantasies of the Master Race, →ISBN, page 193:

     In this oat-burner, the hero, played by Buck Jones, is supposedly a full-blooded Bannock pony express rider who falls head over heels for a white woman.