moot

Etymology

The noun is inherited from Middle English mot, also mote,^[2][3][4] inherited from Old English gemōt (“meeting, assembly”), with mōt, which occurs in Old English only in compounds before the 12th century.^{[5][6][7][8][4]} It goes back to Proto-Germanic *mōtą (“meeting”),^[9][10][11] with the collective prefix *ga-,^[6][4] and is cognate with Old Saxon mōt, Old Norse mót (“meeting”), Middle Dutch moet, Old High German muot and Middle High German muoze (“meeting, attack”).^[5][4][8][2] It is related to meet.^{[9][2][3][12][13]} The OED thinks that the uncompounded Middle English use was probably reinforced by the Old Norse word and is partly a shortening of imōt.^[5][8] The verb is inherited from Middle English moten, inherited from Old English mōtian (“to meet, talk, discuss, plead”), from the noun.^{[6][2][3][14]} The adjective arose in the 16th century from attributive uses of the noun, as in moot case and moot point.^{[5][6][8][4][12]}

Earliest recorded meaning

A meeting, an assembly of people, especially for judicial or legislative business, and the place where it met: Old English, first in the Antwerp Glossary.^[5] Barnhart dates gemōt probably to about 750, and the uncompounded mot to before 1121, in the Peterborough Chronicle.^[4]

Semantic evolution

Ayto notes that a moot point is etymologically one talked about at a meeting.^[9] The early moot was especially a meeting of freemen to settle community affairs and administer justice,^[6][3] as in folkmoot and witenagemot;^[2][6] the word is now historical in this sense.^[14][15] In Middle English it also meant argument or discussion (about 1225 to 1676) and a lawsuit or plea (about 1225 to 1656),^[5] and in the early 15th century the awful moot was the Last Judgment.^[6] At the Inns of Court a moot was the discussion of a hypothetical case by law students for practice, recorded by the OED from 1512 and by Barnhart from 1531;^[5][4] the exercise died out in the 19th century and has since been revived in university law courses.^[13] From it came moot case (1570s) and the adjective "open to debate", recorded from 1563,^[5][6][3] with moot point before 1650.^[4] In North American law, from 1831, a moot case or issue became one of no practical significance, purely academic,^[5][14] and in the United States the verb has meant to make a question irrelevant since 1980.^[5] The verb, which in Old English meant to converse or to argue and plead, came in 1685 to mean to raise a point for discussion, its main current sense.^[5][6][9] Johnson (1755) defined it as to plead a mock cause, as was done in the Inns of Court.^[16] In Scots and northern dialect it still meant to mention or hint in the 19th century.^[17][5]

Timeline

• c. 750 – gemōt, a meeting or assembly.^[4] The OED's first record is in the Antwerp Glossary.^[5]
• before 1121 – uncompounded mot, in the Peterborough Chronicle.^[4]
• c. 1225 – argument, discussion; a lawsuit, a plea (both obsolete by 1676).^[5]
• before 1475 – the spelling with -oo-.^[4]
• 1512 – the discussion of a hypothetical case by law students.^[5] Barnhart dates it to 1531.^[4]
• 1563 – adjective, open to debate.^[5][3]
• 1570s – moot case.^[6]
• 1685 – verb, to raise a point for discussion.^[5][6]
• 1831 – North American law, of no practical significance.^[5]
• 1980 – US verb, to make a question irrelevant.^[5]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Open to argument; debatable or unsettled: Whether the bridge could have been saved is a moot point.^{[18][3][7][14]}
2. (chiefly North American) Having no practical relevance; purely academic: After the company closed, the quarrel over its name was moot.^[18][7][5]

Verb

1. To raise or put forward for discussion; to propose: A merger was first mooted last spring.^{[18][3][14][5]}
2. To argue a hypothetical case as a law student.^[18][14]
3. (US) To make a question irrelevant or of no practical significance.^[5]

Noun

1. (historical) An assembly of freemen in Anglo-Saxon or medieval England for local legal and administrative business; also its meeting place.^{[18][3][14][15]}
2. A mock legal proceeding in which law students argue a hypothetical case; a moot court.^[18][14][15]
3. (obsolete, 1225–1676) Argument, discussion.^[5][14]

Word family

• mootness
• mooter
• folkmoot
• moot court
• moot hall

Related words

• meet
• gemot
• witenagemot

Usage notes

The dialect words moot, a tree stump (from 1777), and moot, to dig up or unearth (from 1610), have a separate, uncertain origin; the OED compares Dutch moot (“slice, piece”).^{[5][14][17][3]} Dictionary.com lists moot among the words confused with mute.^[19]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
8. ^ a b c d Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ a b c d Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
10. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Germanisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
11. ^ Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
12. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
13. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
15. ^ a b c Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
16. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
17. ^ a b Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
18. ^ a b c d e f Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
19. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House