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by alanctgardner2 4687 days ago
It's used in one idiomatic expression, "the point is moot", which is almost always misused to mean 'irrelevant' rather than 'debatable'. The funny thing about idioms is that many are atomic: native speakers don't bother to dissect the individual words, they use the whole phrase because it signals something specific to other fluent speakers. When you learn a second language (French, in my case), these expressions are interesting because they usually do have an outmoded meaning, but if you ask someone they have a very hard time translating or explaining. They're also a giant pain unless you learn through immersion, because they're habitual and not usually systematic in any way.

The "archaic" usage at that link is actually very much alive, it's a technical term used in law school for mock trials [1]. I would argue law students actually understand the meaning of the term better than average, native English speakers, making the technical term less archaic.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moot_court

1 comments

This.

Also the word overwhelmingly is used to describe a meeting to discuss a topic throughout Europe.

It's not an unusual statement in Europe to have a moot or attend a moot. We're primarily a Finnish company so the name for us is meaningful.