In Florence there was a stone on which Dante sat in the evenings, pondering and talking to acquaintances. One asked him: ‘Dante, what is your favourite food?’ He replied: ‘Eggs.’ The following year, the same celebrity-hunter found him in the same place and asked: ‘With what?’ Dante replied: ‘With salt.’
In the Piazza delle Pallottole in Florence skulks a lump of stone bearing a label declaring it the genuine Stone of Dante. It doesn’t look very comfortable but at least it explains the line in Browning’s ‘Old Pictures in Florence’ where he says: ‘This time we’ll shoot better game and bag ’em hot – / No mere display at the stone of Dante, / But a kind of sober Witenagemot.’
The Witenagemot was one of several kinds of meeting or moot enjoyed by the Anglo-Saxons. In the 16th century, moot was the name for an exercise in debate at the Inns of Court. The name was revived in the 19th century.
This gives us a moot point: one that is debatable. But a reader, Anthony Whitehead, has found moot in a different sense: ‘academic’ or ‘irrelevant’. He noticed the new meaning in J.K. Rowling and blames her.
He is on to something. Alex Massie in the Times used the familiar sense: ‘It is a moot point whether or not social media encourages paranoia and hatred.’ In the new sense, James Cleverly, when asked on Today whether he would vote for Donald Trump, replied: ‘I am not an American citizen so it is a moot point.’ He didn’t mean ‘debatable’, he meant ‘irrelevant’.
Miss Rowling cannot be blamed for the new sense, for it originated in 19th-century America, where it is now the usual meaning. One can see how it developed: a question suited to a moot was regarded as academic, not real. When George Washington wrote in 1779 ‘The policy of our arming slaves is in my opinion a moot point’, he meant it was debatable.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in