sat

Pluralsats, SATs, Sats

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of sit.

   She sat down beside her grandfather and took his hand.

   The banquet hall sat three hundred guests for the wedding.

   Note

   One spelling does both jobs: the simple past (she sat down) and the past participle (he has sat there all morning). It also serves the transitive uses of sit, so a hall sat three hundred guests and a host sat the guests by the window. The British I'm sat here belongs to the colloquial "seated" use.

2. 2
   Sayes-ay-TEEUS/ˌɛs eɪ ˈti/UK/ˌɛs eɪ ˈtiː/

   noun · SATUScountable or uncountableabbreviationellipsis

   Short for SAT Reasoning Test, formerly an acronym of Scholastic Aptitude Test and of Scholastic Assessment Test: a US national exam taken each year by high school juniors and seniors.

   She scored 1450 on the SAT and applied to six colleges.

   Many juniors take the SATs in the spring and again in the fall.

   Note

   The name usually comes with the: students take the SAT, and the plural the SATs is common too. The letters are said one by one, so the indefinite article is an, as in an SAT. Scores are quoted as bare numbers with a, as when Ian Bogost wrote in 2023 that an AI had "earned" a 1410.

3. 3
   noun · Satabbreviation

   Abbreviation of Saturday.

   Library hours: Mon–Fri 9–8, Sat 10–5, closed Sun.

   Next practice: Sat., 10 a.m., at the north field.

   Note

   On calendars, timetables and opening-hours signs it keeps company with the other day abbreviations, such as Fri and Sun, with or without a period. It is read aloud as Saturday rather than said as a word of its own, and it keeps the capital of the full name.

4. 4
   adjectivenonstandardUKnot before a noun

   Sitting down, or in a seated position somewhere.

   Hang on, I'm sat on the train. I'll ring you back in ten minutes.

   They'd been sat in the queue at the post office for half an hour.

   Similarseated, sitting

   Oppositestanding

   Note

   In casual British speech sat often stands where standard English has sitting or seated: I was sat by the window means I was sitting by the window. It follows be and never comes before a noun. Some listeners hear it as an error, so formal writing keeps to sitting or seated.

5. 5
   nounabbreviation

   Abbreviation of satellite, in the sense of a human-made object placed in orbit.

   The launch put two more communications sats into low orbit.

   Ground controllers lost contact with the weather sat for nearly an hour.

   Note

   Compounds and quick talk are where it turns up: a sat phone, a weather sat, a sat dish on the roof. It covers only the human-made kind of satellite, never a moon or a client state, and formal writing prefers the full word.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   A level of saturation, especially the level of oxygen in the blood.

   We can't send him home until his sats stay above 94 percent.

   Her oxygen sat on room air was only 90 percent.

   Similarsaturation

   Note

   Nurses and doctors use it as shorthand, usually in the plural: staff check a patient's oxygen sats, try to get the sats up, and worry when they start falling. The singular appears mainly in phrases like an oxygen sat reading. Outside a medical setting the full word saturation is clearer.

7. 7
   noun · SATBritishcountable or uncountableacronym

   Acronym of Statutory Assessment Test, a national curriculum assessment taken in schools in England.

   Pupils spent the spring term revising for their SATs.

   The head teacher said this year's maths SAT was harder than last year's.

   Note

   The S stands for statutory, meaning set down by law: the test belongs to the national curriculum, so schools must give it. It shares its letters with the American high school exam, but around pupils, terms and head teachers, SAT means this test, and it is often plural, as in revising for their SATs.

8. 8
   adjectiveabbreviation

   Abbreviation of satisfactory.

   The safety audit came back sat on every item except the fire exits.

   The sergeant rated the platoon's weapons inspection sat.

   Note

   This clipping records a rating, not a feeling: work marked sat has met the requirements without going beyond them. It lives on inspection reports, audits and grade sheets, following verbs like rate or come back. In ordinary prose the full word satisfactory reads better, and the clipping of "satisfied" is the one that describes how a person feels.

9. 9
   adjectiveabbreviation

   Abbreviation of saturated.

   Each serving has 9 grams of fat, 3 of them sat fat.

   Wash the organic layer twice with sat. sodium bicarbonate solution.

   Note

   Two meanings of saturated share this clipping, and it sits right before its noun. In sat fat it describes fats whose carbon atoms are joined only by single bonds; in a lab instruction such as sat. sodium bicarbonate it describes a solution holding all the solute it can dissolve at that temperature. In ordinary prose saturated in full is clearer.

Showing meanings only. Show all 13