Mr Peter Andrews writes to tell me that he was told by a lawyer with whom he used to be a school that a moot point is not one that is debatable, but one that has already been decided. This is not news that has reached the Oxford English Dictionary, which happens to have revised its entry on moot only a few weeks ago.
Originally, a moot point was one proposed for discussion at a moot. A moot, in the legal sense, was either ‘a discussion of a hypothetical case by law students for practice’ or ‘a hypothetical doubtful case that may be used for discussion’. The dictionary then gets into a chatty mood and notes that moots were ‘revived in the Inns of Court in the 19th century, but fell into disuse (last retained at Gray’s Inn according to the New English Dictionary [i.e.,
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