# goat

Pronunciation: say "GOHT" US /ɡoʊt/, UK /ɡəʊt/

## Noun

1. Any of the hoofed mammals that make up the genus Capra.
   - Simple: Any animal with hooves from the group that scientists call Capra.
   - _The town hired a herd of goats to clear the weeds from the steep hillside._
   - _A wild goat picked its way along the narrow cliff ledge._
3. The meat of a goat, used as food.
   - Simple: Meat that comes from a goat.
   - _The restaurant's curried goat sells out every Friday night._
   - _Slow-cooked goat falls off the bone after a few hours in the pot._
4. A person who is blamed or mocked for a failure or loss; the loser or scapegoat. *(colloquial)*
   - Simple: The person everyone blames or laughs at when something goes wrong.
   - _After his error in the ninth inning, the shortstop was the goat of the night._
   - _In a playoff series, a single fumble can turn a hero into a goat._
5. A man who shows excessive and offensive sexual desire. *(slang)*
   - Simple: A man who is too interested in sex in a way that makes others uncomfortable.
   - _The dirty old goat at the end of the bar wouldn't stop leering at the servers._
   - _At the reunion he kept leering at women half his age, and his ex-wife muttered that he was still a dirty old goat._

## Noun · GOAT

2. Acronym of greatest of all time: the greatest performer ever in a field, especially a sport. *(slang)* — Acronym of greatest of all time.
   - Simple: Short for greatest of all time. People use it for the best person ever at something.
   - _Whatever you think of his attitude, he's the GOAT of tennis, and the trophies prove it._
   - _Putting two GOATs in one locker room is a lot of ego for any coach to manage._

## Proper noun · Goat

6. The eighth of the twelve animals in the repeating twelve-year cycle of the Chinese zodiac, which is tied to the Chinese calendar.
   - Simple: The eighth of the twelve animals in the Chinese zodiac, each linked to a year.
   - _The restaurant's placemat listed the years of the Goat alongside those of the other eleven animals._
   - _The Lunar New Year parade featured a giant paper Goat to welcome the new year._

## Verb

7. To single someone out to take the blame for a failure or loss.
   - Simple: To make one person take the blame when something goes wrong.

## Other meanings

- (verb) To let goats feed on something, such as a pasture or the plants on a piece of land.
- (noun) A car of the Pontiac GTO model.
- (noun) A person whose speech a speech recognition system has trouble understanding, in contrast to a sheep, whose speech it handles well.
- (noun) In roller derby, a blocker who is isolated behind the opposing team's blockers, a tactic used to slow down the pack.
- (verb) In roller derby, to isolate an opposing blocker behind one's own blockers in order to slow down the pack.
- (noun) A member of the “government of all the talents” that the British prime minister Gordon Brown proposed.

## Origin

From Middle English goot, from Old English gāt, from Proto-West Germanic *gait and Proto-Germanic *gaits, probably from an earlier substrate language. The sense "lecherous man", recorded since Shakespeare's time, draws on the animal's reputation for lust.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/goat (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).