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Glite Dictionary
🤠 Western style 🤠 A Western film
oater

oater

9.9
A film or story about cowboys and the Old West
  • noun
  • /ˈoʊtər/
  • Archaic
translation icon : película del oeste
  • The film festival featured several classic oaters that captured the spirit of the American West.

Examples

  • The bottom fell out of the oater market?

    Fiction book (2002)

  • From 1940 to 1942, PRC had only two budget tiers: westerns and features, but the 1943-1944 season included three core budget levels: oaters, B features, and programmers.

    Academic text (2017)

  • After two production seasons that emphasized western oaters for dual bills in rural independent theaters, PRC executives supplemented their series production with a slate of higher-budgeted programmers.

    Academic text (2017)

  • He loves to watch oaters with his friends every Saturday night.

  • Many famous actors started their careers in oaters during the mid-20th century.

Synonyms

Western
vsoater
63 4.3

A film or book about cowboys and life in the American West

is the informal slang term for that genre
Wild West show
vsoater
  • Archaic
1 6.3

A live show with cowboys riding horses, shooting, and showing life in the old West

is about fictional films or stories rather than live staged displays

How Western

Western
63 4.3
oater
  • Archaic
9.9

Surface Forms

oater singular
oaters plural

Morphology

oater = oat (opaque) = oat + er

Although the word is formally 'oat' + '-er', the slang sense for a Western film depends on a specialized cultural association rather than a predictable meaning from the parts.

Etymology

Oater was named after oat 'the grain horses eat' since Westerns always had horses, so an oater is a casual name for a cowboy movie or story. That's why people call a film an oater when it is about the American Old West.