Moot > mute (point) eggcorn redux

[Mark Mandel]

A nice point... in both senses. :-)

m a m

On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 1:08 PM, Damien Hall <djh514 at york.ac.uk> wrote:

> I've just ended a post by saying:
>
> 'Again, someone who makes a large part of his living making speeches in the
> courtroom ought not to have his rhetoric affected by the emotion of a
> subject. It looks to me, then, as if /mju:t/ for _moot_ is actually
> progressing into the language.'
>
> I should have said, more precisely, that it looks to me as if _moot_ is
> actually gradually being replaced by _mute_ - since it's probably true that
> _moot_ is not in many people's active vocabularies (except in this set
> phrase), but someone who would be much more likely to have _moot_ in his
> active vocabulary, a lawyer, still used _mute_ in its place.
>
> Damien
>

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