I. ˈmüt, usu -üd.+V noun
( -s )
Etymology: Middle English mot, moot, from Old English mōt assembly, meeting, encounter; akin to Old Frisian mōt lik legal, Old Saxon mōt meeting, encounter, Middle High German muoze encounter, Old Norse mōt meeting, assembly, Old English mētan to meet — more at meet
1.
a. : a meeting for discussion and deliberation ; especially : a meeting of freemen (as of a town, city, or shire in early England) or their representatives to administer justice or for administrative purposes — compare folkmoot , gemot , hundred , witenagemot
b. : a place for holding such a meeting
2. obsolete : argument , discourse , discussion
but to end this moot — John Milton
3. : a hypothetical case argued or practice hearing held by law students
elected by his classmates as prosecutor for the weekly moot
II. verb
( -ed/-ing/-s )
Etymology: Middle English moten, from Old English mōtian, from mōt, n.
intransitive verb
obsolete : to argue a case at law (as a hypothetical case) as a student in a law school
mooted seven years in the Inns of Court — John Earle
transitive verb
1. archaic : to discuss from a legal standpoint : argue
to moot cases on the … ruin of the constitution — Edmund Burke
2.
a. : to bring up for discussion : broach II 6, suggest
condemned such a step when it was first mooted a year before — Ethel Drus
plans have been mooted for altering the general system of criminal procedure — Ernest Barker
b. : discuss , debate
the question, so often mooted and never solved, of church unity — Commonweal
the diction of poetry is now, as it has always been, a vigorously mooted point — J.L.Lowes
3. : to deprive of practical significance : make academic
the case was mooted by unwillingness of the complainant to prosecute
III. adjective
Etymology: moot (I)
1.
a. : open to question : subject to discussion : debatable , unsettled
it is a moot question what might have happened — O.D.Tolischus
words of moot etymology — A.H.Marckwardt
fill in gaps … and to check moot points — Leslie Spier
b. : subjected to discussion : controversial , disputed
with a moot point of law cleared up — John LaFarge
extract … his views on the then moot subject of a second front — Henry Cassidy
2. : deprived of practical significance : made abstract or purely academic
thought that the Supreme Court would drop the case as a moot question, if the bill should become law — Time
appeal does not become moot when the alien leaves the country, since the possibility of a criminal prosecution for attempted re-entry … remains — Harvard Law Review
3. : concerned with a hypothetical situation
moot court
student participation in a moot … case — Bulletin of Information: Academy of Advanced Traffic
IV. ˈmüt transitive verb
( -ed/-ing/-s )
Etymology: Middle English moten
dialect England : to grub out (as a tree root) or unearth (as an otter)