Definition of "moot"

[…] :indeed we were obligd to hawl off rather in a hurry for the wind freshning a little we found ourselves in a bay which it was a moot point whether or not we could get out of: […]

1770, Joseph Banks, The Endeavour Journal of Sir Joseph Banks, January 4, 1770 (published 1962)

[T]he uncertain, unsettled condition of this science of Cetology is in the very vestibule attested by the fact, that in some quarters it still remains a moot point whether a whale be a fish.

1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “Chapter 32”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley

1903, Walter Crane, Lewis F. Day, Moot Points: Friendly Disputes on Art and Industry Between Walter Crane and Lewis F. Day

The extent to which these Parisian radicals ‘represented’ the French people as a whole was very moot.

2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin, published 2003, page 477

The question [whether certain poetry was present in the original Hebrew Psalms] in our own time is moot, since various considerations have made it certain that, of all the hazards presented by biblical translation, a dangerous excess of beauty is not one of them.

2007, Paul Mankowski, “The Languages of Biblical Translation”, in Adoremus Bulletin, volume 13, number 4

The pleading used in courts and chancery called moots.

1531, Thomas Elyot, edited by Ernest Rhys, The Boke Named the Governour […] (Everyman’s Library), London: J[oseph] M[alaby] Dent & Co; New York, N.Y.: E[dward] P[ayson] Dutton & Co, published

A number of other mergers of U.S. railroads are mooted, but the I.C.C. [Interstate Commerce Commission] has made it clear that its assent to the N.& W.-Virginian proposal, which was unopposed by competitors or stockholders, should not be taken as an indication that others will swiftly pass its scrutiny.

1960 January, “Talking of Trains: N.& W.-Virginian merger”, in Trains Illustrated, page 9

The general idea was first mooted a couple of years ago by Philip Hammond, then Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer, as a means of encouraging the EU to strike a friendly Brexit deal with the UK.

2019 December 17, Howard Davies, “Will the UK really turn into 'Singapore-on-Thames' after Brexit?”, in The Guardian‎

a problem which hardly has been mentioned, far less mooted, in this country

1859–1860, William Hamilton, edited by H[enry] L[ongueville] Mansel and John Veitch, Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to IV), Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons

First a case is appointed to be mooted by certain young men, containing some doubtful controversy.

1531, Thomas Elyot, edited by Ernest Rhys, The Boke Named the Governour […] (Everyman’s Library), London: J[oseph] M[alaby] Dent & Co; New York, N.Y.: E[dward] P[ayson] Dutton & Co, published

An elevated cycleway connecting Los Angeles and Pasadena was mooted as early as 1896 …

2015 March 4, Peter Shadbolt, “Amazing Cycle Super Highways”, in CNN‎, retrieved 2015-03-11

There is a difference between mooting and pleading; between fencing and fighting.

1641, Ben Jonson, Timber

In that mater now I will mute no moir.

1535, William Stewart, The Buik of the Croniclis of Scotland‎

'Ithin the woodlands, flow'ry gleäded, / By the woak tree's mossy moot

1903, William Barnes, “My Orcha'd in Linden Lea”, in Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect

"Zarch tha whole worl', vrom Guenever / To Squier Mules' ta Muddever, / Moot iv'ry brack about un.

1867, William Frederick Rock, Jim and Nell‎, page 24

Eid Mubarak to all my muslim moots out there

2020, @healer_katara, "Café au Twitter", ZaofuToday, Issue 1, page 10

I just simply post them in my main Twitter account, then hoping that my moots will like and retweet them.

2021, @DIORJAEYUN, "NCity Small Business", EnVi, Winter 2021, page 222

RT: hi..jst joined #edtwt! let’s be moots and rt each other

2022, anonymous, quoted in Fayika Farhat Nova et al., "Cultivating the Community: Inferring Influence Within Eating Disorder Networks on Twitter", Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, January 2022 (article link)