What is a "moot" point?

Question

Any idea where the word "moot" comes from?

Answer 1

- Having no practical importance; academic

No one seems to be sure of it's origin. One site I visited gave this:

Moot point is one of those phrases that once had a firm and well-understood meaning, but no longer does. It was just as you say: a matter that was uncertain or undecided, so open to debate.

It comes from the same source as meet and originally had the same meaning. In England in medieval times it referred specifically to an assembly of people, in particular one that had some sort of judicial function, and was often spelled mot or mote. So you find references to the witenagemot (the assembly of the witan, the national council of Anglo-Saxon times), hundred-mote (where a hundred was an Anglo-Saxon administrative area, part of a county or shire), and many others. So something that was mooted was put up for discussion and decision at a meeting — by definition something not yet decided.

The confusion over the meaning of moot point is modern. It is a misunderstanding of another sense of moot for a discussion forum in which hypothetical cases are argued by law students for practice. Since there is no practical outcome of these sessions, and the cases are invented anyway, people seem to have assumed that a moot point means one of no importance. So we’ve seen a curious shift in which the sense of “open to debate” has become “not worth debating”.

The mute spelling is a development that has come about because moot is now a fossil word, usually encountered only in this phrase; there is an understandable tendency to convert the unknown into the known, and mute seems to fit the new meaning rather better. But it’s wrong.

Answer 2

Moot Point Meaning

Answer 3

Define Moot Point

Answer 4

It's interesting that "moot" is commonly used in a way that is actually not correct, but accepted.

The word "moot" means "a discussion or an argument, most commonly of a hypothetical question of law." A secondary meaning is for something to be "so hypothetical as to be meaningless" and that's the common use of the word today.

To say something is a "moot" point is to say it is really of no point at all.

Answer 5

Jeremiah Moot.

English Professor (1823-1891) From Sussex, England.

Answer 6

Idiom: Moot point
something's a moot point, there's some disagreement about it: a debatable point. In the U.S., this expression usually means that there is no point in debating something, because it just doesn't matter.


The adjective moot is originally a legal term going back to the mid-16th century from Moot as an Old English language (Anglo-Saxon) term for meeting.

Answer 7

"moot" is a term derived (I believe), from Latin that originated in lawyer talk.

Moot means that any argument or counter argument is pointless (or "moot"), because the matter in question has been definitively settled.

An example... Let's say you get arrested for shoplifting and you say you didn't, but the store dick says that you did. You go to trial. The prosecution produces a razor clear video surveillance tape with you clearly stealing the item and walking out the door without paying for it.

The judge would then rule than any further arguments from either side are "moot" because the evidence had clearly settled the matter.

Answer 8

A moot point is brought up after the decision has already been made. It is of no use.

“Moot” is a very old word related to “meeting,” specifically a meeting where serious matters are discussed. Oddly enough, a moot point can be a point worth discussing at a meeting (or in court)—an unresolved question—or it can be the opposite: a point already settled and not worth discussing further. At any rate, “mute point” is simply wrong, as is the less common “mood point.”

Answer 9

The phrase can have either of two opposite meanings, depending on context. A "moot point" is one that formerly may havebeen important but is now irrelevant because circumstances have changed. Or ... a "moot point" is one that is undecided, interesting, open for debate.

Answer 10

No idea where it comes from but moot means it doesn't matter or is after the fact.