[jmartrican]

I notice the definitions for Moot are contradicting.

definitions: Open to debate (adj.). Having no legal significance (n.).

And even when searched in Google I get...

1. subject to debate, dispute, or uncertainty. 2. having little or no practical relevance, typically because the subject is too uncertain to allow a decision.

Am I wrong here? I always looked at moot as not mattering. But if it is open for debate, then does it not still matter? To me, moot means no worth debating any longer.

[crazygringo]

I have never seen moot as "open to debate" in everyday conversation or printed material. It's always meant no longer relevant, in my personal experience.

I wonder if the "open to debate" meaning is an older one that's fallen out of use, or used in certain technical fields (e.g. law), or depends on geography (e.g. British).

[vincent-manis]

Entmoot (Tolkien)

[mttjj]

Got me curious. The Wikipedia page for the term basically says that the word means the different things depending on being used in an American legal or British legal context.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mootness

Seems like the word could be classified as a contronym in some sense.

[kwk1]

Perhaps worth noting the term's etymology as a cousin of "meeting", and from there seeing how it can come to mean both something that's worth talking about later and something that's not worth talking about now.