Open to debate, or unworthy of it – ‘moot’ can mean either. At least that’s the argument I’m mooting.
The OED quotes the US supreme court ruling that ‘a moot question’ has ‘no bearing’ on an issue. The word was used to describe arguments over the disputed 2000 election. Photograph: Shawn Thew/EPA.
If the past tense of take is took, why shouldn’t the past tense of meet be moot? (“They moot by moonlight.”) Sadly it isn’t, but moot remains a lovely and versatile word, equally at home as noun, adjective or verb – and with contrasting meanings, depending on which side of the Atlantic you are using it.
A magical Country diary by my favourite Guardian writer, Paul Evans, discussed some of the stories surrounding hawthorn trees and noted: “Hawthorns marked moots, or assemblies to decide issues of local importance … this one may still be a ‘moot point’ – something arguable, undecided, contested, its original function lost generations ago.”
In a complex but fascinating entry about this word, the OED confirms that moot, which dates back to the 11th century, originally meant “a meeting, an assembly of people, esp one for judicial or legislative purposes. Also: a place where a meeting is held.” Sometimes a moot-bell would be rung to summon people to a moot, where they could moot their arguments.
In a more specialised legal meaning, dating from the 16th century, a moot is “the discussion of a hypothetical case by law students for practice; a hypothetical doubtful case that may be used for discussion”. Students might refer to a moot-book containing legal cases – moots – to be discussed.
Later a moot point, initially a legal issue, became used more widely to mean one that was open to argument, debatable or uncertain. The author Gerald Durrell used it in this sense when he wrote: “Whether he could have bitten us successfully … was rather a moot point, but it was not the sort of experiment I cared to make.”
Today, I think most British English speakers would use moot in this sense, or as a verb to mean proposed (“Banking: plan mooted for merger of trade associations” ran a typical headline this week). It’s a different story in the United States, where since the 19th century a moot point has been one that is at best academic and at worst irrelevant. The OED quotes the supreme court, no less, ruling that “a moot question” has “no bearing” on an issue. So in 2000, Time magazine, writing about the US election, said: “Media critics have long argued that networks should not call races until all polls have closed to avoid affecting turnout. It’s a moot argument: information will out.”
Just to complicate things, the older meaning of moot as in a hypothetical discussion by law students survives in the US, unchanged, in the moot courts at which American law students practise their skills in simulated legal proceedings.
Using moot to mean not open to debate, rather than its opposite, sounds odd to me, but that’s only because I learned English in Macclesfield, rather than Massachusetts. And it’s hardly a unique example of words that mean something different in the UK and US. We normally cope perfectly well with this: when my former American girlfriend casually dropped the word “suspenders” into the conversation, I was well aware that, sadly, she was referring to my then on-trend red braces rather than any item of her own apparel.
Lynne Murphy’s fine blog separated by a common language is a good place to keep up to date on such different meanings, and how they cross the Atlantic in what in fact is a process of exchange. (In the UK, we get bake-off; in the US, they gain gap year.)
You just need to be aware that when an American says something is “moot” they might not mean the same as a British person – an issue particularly relevant to the Guardian, a British newspaper with more readers in the US than the UK. Either way, please, please don’t spell it “mute point”.
The last word goes to PG Wodehouse, who wrote that he lived in “an age full of Moot Questions”, adding inimitably: “Some mooter than others.”
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