Moot or not?

For years, I assumed that if something was “moot,” it didn’t matter, or wasn’t worth arguing about. Was I ever wrong!

However, it turns out that I have company in misunderstanding this word.

Here’s what I discovered thumbing through Theodore Bernstein’s The Careful Writer: A Modern Guide to English Usage.

Moot means arguable or subject to discussion, but the misusers think it means hypothetical, superfluous, or academic.

It’s a good thing I’ve never used the word “moot” in my written—and probably not in speech, either. That’s no moot point!

 

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