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> You've got a hold of the right stick, but at the wrong end,
> unfortunately.
> As so often, the Americans are the conservatives, not the innovators.
No, I don't think so. Moot as a meeting or assembly to debate matters of
importance is Anglo-Saxon; hence Tolkein's Entmoot. And it is the only
meaning you will ever hear in ordinary conversation this side of the
Atlantic (I can't speak for specialist legal jargon). If someone says in a
meeting that something is "a moot point", it means that there are arguments
both ways. Often it's a polite way of saying "I disagree". In a UK meeting,
the phrase is used to open a debate on the issue, in a US meeting, it's used
to close it.
I've become familiar with the American usage through spending too much time
at US-dominated W3C meetings (should they change the name?) but it still
throws me occasionally when I read it without an American accent.
Michael Kay
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