Word Confusion: Moot Point versus Mute Point

Plural for the noun: moots
Gerund: mooting

Third person present verb: moots
Past tense or past participle: mooted
Present participle: mooting

Plural for the noun and third person present verb: mutes
Past tense or past participle: muted
Present participle: muting

• An irrelevant question, a matter of no importance
• Subject to debate, dispute, or uncertainty
• Not admitting of a final decision
• Of little or no practical value, meaning, or relevance
• Purely academic
• Debatable
• Doubtful

[Chiefly Law] Not actual

• Theoretical
• Hypothetical

• Not expressed in speech
• Characterized by an absence of sound
• Quiet

[Dated or offensive; of a person] Lacking the faculty of speech

[Of a letter] Not pronounced

Noun:
[Dated or offensive] A person lacking the faculty of speech.

• [Historical; in some Asian countries] A servant who was deprived of the power of speech
• [Historical] An actor in a dumbshow
• [Historical] A professional attendant or mourner at a funeral

A clamp placed over the bridge of a stringed instrument to deaden the resonance without affecting the vibration of the strings

• A pad or cone placed in the opening of a brass or other wind instrument

A device on a television, telephone, or other appliance that temporarily turns off the sound

A pack of hounds ²

Verb, transitive:
Deaden, muffle, or soften the sound of

• Muffle the sound of (a musical instrument), especially by the use of a mute
• Reduce the strength or intensity of

• A regular gathering of people having a common interest

[Law] A mock trial set up to examine a hypothetical case as an academic exercise

Verb, intransitive:
To dispute ³

• Plead

Verb, transitive:
Usually be mooted

• Suggest an idea or possibility

To reduce or remove the practical significance of

• Make purely theoretical or academic

[Archaic] To argue a case, especially in a mock court

It’s a moot point whether the chicken or the egg came first.

Whether the temperature rise was mainly due to the greenhouse effect was a moot point.

It is moot whether this phrase should be treated as metaphor or not.

Whether that was the cause of their troubles is a moot point.

In practical terms, the issue of her application is moot because the deadline has passed.

Noun:
They’ll be holding the moot next quarter moon.

You guys ready for the moot next week?

The Ents in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings held their own Ent moot.

Verb, intransitive:
The idea was first mooted in the 1930s.

“And it was they, not the British, who slapped down any suggestion of democratic reform when it was quietly mooted by British colonial officers in the 1950s” (Buruma).

Conservatives had shouted down the proposal when it was first mooted.

The issue of whether a person’s nature or upbringing is more important continues to be mooted by experts and laymen alike.

Verb, transitive:
Sylvia needed a vacation, and a trip to Ireland had been mooted.

“He looked for an easy way out. A spot in the stateside Guard would have suited him fine; in the event, he dodged and weaved until a low draft number came along to moot his problem” (Hertzberg).

“And then the word comes of Ted’s inoperable pancreatic cancer, and death moots the long conflict” (Rhodes).

She gazed at him in mute appeal.

The great church was mute and dark.

Don’t mind him; he’s mute.

A mute e is generally dropped before suffixes that begin with a vowel.

Noun:
They’re all a bunch of mutes.

The Ottoman Turks preferred mutes as guards.

“The device of using a mute to convey essential facts by dumbshow became a regular feature of melodramas” (Dumbshow).

“There would also be fewer professional attendants in a middle-class funeral, perhaps only one mute, the six bearers but no pages” (Kane).

In this passage I want the strings to use their mutes with the trumpets using their mutes in the passage that follows.

Jen thinks she’s worn down the mute for her sax.

She put the remote on mute.

The abbot had a mute of hounds.

Verb, transitive:
Her footsteps were muted by the thick carpet.

He turns the set on, mutes the sound, but flicks through the channels.

No, the trumpets are to be muted, not the violins.

His professional contentment was muted by personal sadness.

1. Old English mōt meaning assembly or meeting and mōtian meaning to converse is of Germanic origin.
2. The adjective was originally an attributive noun use (see moot court) and dates from the mid-16th century.
3. The current verb sense dates from the mid-17th century.

1. From Middle English from the Old French muet is a diminutive of mu, from the Latin mutus.
2. Late Middle English from the Anglo-Norman mut, mute, moute meaning pack of hounds trained for hunting is from the Latin movere meaning to move.