Word of the Week! Moot Richmond Writing

Word of the Week! Moot Richmond Writing I find it odd that Ive not covered moot before. Perhaps my interest skews toward the Latinate. This short term just drips with the mists of the Celtic fringe of Northern Europe. So, its not a moot point: where did it come from? Northern Europe, yes, but not Celtic languages. Origins of the word go to Germany and Scandinavia, all with a sense of a meeting. Remember Ent Moot in Tolkiens The Two Towers?   Yet that is a real meeting. Noting mock about it. So how did our word take on its modern sense of a moot court? Moot can also mean a tree-stump  , something our Oxford Don would have certainly considered in choosing his term for a meeting of talking, walking trees. Some noun usages mean merely an argument rather than the place where it occurs. Only when we get to moot as an adjective, meaning having no practical significance or relevance; abstract, academic or unable to be resolved, do we get our familiar meaning. Points in court were declared moot, and I have idea how the very word for the gathering became the word for a non-desirable outcome. Bryan Garners excellent  A Dictionary of Modern American Usage holds that this shift in meaning occurred about 1900 (436). He says not why. The reasons for that shift are not moot points. It would be worth more research to discover why. Please send us words and metaphors useful in academic writing by e-mailing me (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below. See all of our Metaphors of the Month  here  and Words of the Week  here. Belgrade Moot Court, courtesy of Wikipedia. References: Garner, Bryan A.  A Dictionary of Modern American Usage.  Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998.