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| Authored by: darrellb on Saturday, April 28 2012 @ 09:19 PM EDT |
That is the definition of moot that commonly comes to mind. Of course what
usually comes to my mind is moot.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: IANALitj on Sunday, April 29 2012 @ 12:13 PM EDT |
This "deprived of practical significance" meaning for the adjective
"moot" is not in a copy that I have of Merriam-Webster's New
International Dictionary, Second Edition, dated 1955 (but an edition originating
in 1934). However, it shows up in my 1965 edition of M-W's Seventh New
Collegiate Dictionary. This is based on the Third Edition of the unabridged
work, which dates from 1961 (though my copies are slightly later).
Webster's Third has a corresponding third meaning for the verb "moot":
"to deprive of practical significance : make academic."
So far, we could identify this "deprived" definition as having reached
these American dictionaries about fifty years ago. Obviously, the usage must be
older, and I have traced the American usage back over one hundred years.
The "deprived" definition does not appear in the NED entry from 1908.
(If you want to look the NED up in Wikipedia, you have to look under the OED!)
When the the second edition of the OED was published in 1989, it supplemented
the 1908 NED entry for the noun "moot," but left the 1908 entry for
the adjective entirely unchanged. [Many entries in the OED 2d were expanded
from the NED, as in the case of the noun. A great many were simply reprinted,
as for the adjective. I find it amusing that the OED 2d is both more extensive
than the NED, and physically smaller.]
What the OED 2d does supply is a new entry, for "mootness." This is
characterized as a U.S. legal doctrine: "Of a legal case or question, the
fact or condition of being hypothetical." The six examples (ranging in
date from 1946 to 1974) give instances of the usage of this noun. The examples
from 1946 and 1955 use the adjective "moot" in the sense of
"deprived of significance," a sense which is absent from the
definition of the adjective on the previous page of the OED 2d.
In contrast to the OED 2d, Webster's Third simply defines "mootness"
as the quality or state of being moot, without distinguishing among the variety
of meanings recognized in that dictionary for the adjective.
Wikipedia has an article on mootness, which cites Southern Pacific Terminal Co.
v. ICC, 219 U.S. 498 (1911). This may be found on line at
http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/219/498/case.html
The second sentence of the opinion has an instance -- now over a century old --
of the use of the "deprived" meaning of the adjective: "It is
hence contended that the order of the Commission has expired, and that, the case
having thereby become moot, the appeal should be dismissed." [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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