What does shoat mean?
A shoat is a young pig, especially one that has recently been weaned from its mother. The term is useful when a speaker wants to mark a particular stage in a pig's development rather than refer merely to a piglet or to swine of any age. In farm and rural usage, a newly weaned shoat is still small and vulnerable, and farmers may speak of groups of shoats separately from sows or older growing pigs. Shoat is now chiefly regional or dialectal in English and is less common in formal writing than piglet, but it is firmly established in both British and American rural vocabulary. Its distinctive sound and narrow meaning make it especially memorable: it names the awkward interval between dependence on the sow and full growth into a pig. In that sense, a shoat is not simply any young pig, though older dictionaries sometimes use the term more broadly.
nounA young pig, especially one that has recently been weaned.
- A young pig, especially one that has recently been weaned.
"The farmer separated the newly weaned shoat from the sow."
"The farmer placed creep feed where the young shoat could reach it."
"At the livestock auction, the shoat sold for less than the sow."
The standard plural is shoats; the word is often used collectively for groups of newly weaned pigs.
"The newly weaned shoats were kept in a separate pen."
A shoat is a piglet’s awkward middle age: weaned, tiny, and no longer nursing.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Where does shoat come from?
The English word descends through Middle English forms such as shote from Old English scote, which was recorded with the meaning “pig” and sometimes “young pig.” Old English scote was a Germanic word, and cognate forms in Old Norse, Old Frisian, and Middle Dutch used related words for sheep or young livestock. The deeper Proto-Indo-European derivation is less certain, but the modern word is clearly a continuation of an old English term rather than a recent coinage.
How shoat is actually used
The word is chiefly regional or dialectal in modern English and occurs in British and American rural vocabulary. In its most precise use, it refers to a newly weaned pig rather than any piglet.
Easily confused with shoat
A shoat is a young pig, whereas a shoot can be a plant stem, a film, or the past tense of shoot.