MOOT • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Moot

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/mut/ Listen

adjective

Moot adj.

Subject, or open, to argument or discussion; undecided; debatable; mooted.

Of purely theoretical or academic interest; having no practical consequence; as, the team won in spite of the bad call, and whether the ruling was correct is a moot question.

noun

moot n. (Shipbuilding) A ring for gauging wooden pins.

Moot n. (Written also mote)

A meeting for discussion and deliberation; esp., a meeting of the people of a village or district, in Anglo-Saxon times, for the discussion and settlement of matters of common interest; usually in composition; as, folk-moot.

A discussion or debate; especially, a discussion of fictitious causes by way of practice. "The pleading used in courts and chancery called moots."

Moot case, a case or question to be mooted; a disputable case; an unsettled question.

Moot court, a mock court, such as is held by students of law for practicing the conduct of law cases.

Moot point, a point or question to be debated; a doubtful question.

to make moot v. t. to render moot (2); to moot (3).

verb

Moot v. t. (past & past part. mooted; pres. part. mooting)

To argue for and against; to debate; to discuss; to propose for discussion. "A problem which hardly has been mentioned, much less mooted, in this country."

Specifically: To discuss by way of exercise; to argue for practice; to propound and discuss in a mock court. "First a case is appointed to be mooted by certain young men, containing some doubtful controversy."

To render inconsequential, as having no effect on the practical outcome; to render academic; as, the ruling that the law was invalid mooted the question of whether he actually violated it.

Moot v. i. To argue or plead in a supposed case. "There is a difference between mooting and pleading; between fencing and fighting."

moot v. See 1st Mot. (Obs.)

Mot v. (sing. pres. ind. mot, mote, moot, pl. mot, mote, moote; pres. subj. mote; past moste) (Obs.) May; must; might. "He moot as well say one word as another" "The wordes mote be cousin to the deed." "Men moot (i.e., one only) give silver to the poore freres."

So mote it be, so be it; amen; a phrase in some rituals, as that of the Freemasons.

See images of 'Moot'

Etymology of 'Moot'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Moot" Quotes from Famous Books

... out at me under my own signature—and in an article espousing the side of France in the Alsace-Lorraine controversy? Perhaps not—unless you understand the feeling of the actual possessor and the aspirant to possession of border and other moot territories. "By their spelling ye shall know them!" is their cry. Later, I happened to be in America when that dear good faithful copy-reader changed my Bizerte to the dictionary's Bizerta in an ...

— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons

... allowed to exist for so long a time the privilege of the monastery. And these exceptions, with a hint of some foul murder committed at the castle, reached the nobles roundabout and stirred up a general demur. Beside, it was whispered in the shire-moot that the woman about to be espoused by him was a rank Papist and had already placed popish pictures about the Chapel that was contiguous to the castle. This was all that possibly could be said against her, as she was known to be most gracious to the poor Protestants ...

— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

... tragi-comedy, but, in general, classical comedy was pure comedy—the prose comedy of manners—and classical tragedy admitted no comic intermixture. Whether tragedy should be in rhyme, after the French manner, or in blank verse, after the precedent of the old English stage, was a moot point. Dryden at first argued for rhyme and used it in his "heroic plays"; and it is significant that he defended its use on the ground that it would act as a check upon the poet's fancy. But afterward he grew "weary ...

— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... like America, the very best and most approved methods of cultivation are followed, hence the old system of sowing seed by hand is discarded, and seed-planting machines are now coming into general use. The distance apart which the seeds (about five or six in one hole) should be set, is still a moot question, but it is generally admitted to be unsafe to plant at greater distances than 12 inches. When sown, a light covering is put over, and in a few days—about twelve generally—the tiny plants make their appearance. ...

— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson

... building of regular playhouses the itinerant troupes of actors were accustomed, except when received into private homes, to give their performances in any place that chance provided, such as open street-squares, barns, town-halls, moot-courts, schoolhouses, churches, and—most frequently of all, perhaps—the yards of inns. These yards, especially those of carriers' inns, were admirably suited to dramatic representations, consisting as they did ...

— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams

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