Though it is many years past, I recall being surprised to be granted two weeks off school to “study for O Levels”.
I use quotation marks to signify this was the school’s idea of what was happening. Not mine.
If I’d been asked for an honest opinion I’d have said being in class, teachers standing over me making practice swings with their Lochgelly Tawse, would have been the best way to concentrate the mind on actual study.
Luckily, no one did ask my opinion. So in the time off I studied . . . JRR Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings. I’d discovered the book at my local library and was transfixed. I devoured it, turned back to page one, and started again.
History notes about the Corn Laws? Nay lad. I was ahorse with the Rohirrim; wielding a war axe on Gondor’s battlements; wrestling Gollum at the Forge of Sauron.
A fascination with Middle Earth didn’t do my exam chances much good, but it did provide a solid grasp of the meaning of “moot”. It was the first time I’d encountered the word.
Tolkein uses moot as a noun, meaning a discussion. The ents (tree shepherds) hold an entmoot to decide whether to go to war. In standard English a “moot point” means open to debate, worthy of discourse.
Moot stuck in my mind. I thought it an exotic, interesting word. It is from the Old English mot (assembly) and motian (converse). Its roots are entwined with “meet”.
My teeth are set on edge when I hear it used as “mute”. A mute point might be one that is inaudible. But ’tis surely the caper of motley fools and jackanapes to use it thus?
I am left laughing on the other side of my face (great saying) because acceptance of mute point to mean something that doesn’t need said is, seemingly, spreading rapidly.
Give me strength!
I know the language changes. I know “progressive” theorists welcome definition drift and look down upon old fools, slow to (or refusing to) accept language modification.
But vandalising “moot point” isn’t progress, it is a triumph of error over veracity.
Does any misheard or misunderstood phrase, repeated often enough, become correct then?
Now is the winter of our discount tent. We shall fight them on the peaches. Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Ken’s ass any more.
Queen will be forced to change the lyrics of Bohemian Rhapsody to “spare him his life for this warm sausage tea”.
Word of the week
Hallirackit (adjective)
Scots or Doric meaning energetic, boisterous. EG: “My three-year-old nephew Theo is a hallirackit loon.”
Read the latest Oh my word! every Saturday in The Courier. Contact me at sfinan@dctmedia.co.uk
