Copncerning the Ent Moot.....
 

Hey all, my friend told me something about the ent moot was actually supposed to be called ent meet, but it was screwed up in some publishing things of the books, and Proffeser Tolien decided not to change it cause he liked ent moot better. Is this true?

whoops sorry its Tolkien!! (damn my infernal fat fingers!!!)

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<font size=1 color=339966>[ 9:17 AM February 03, 2004: Message edited by: Estelyn Telcontar ]

Umm... could you somehow back that up with a quote or something? I'd find it hard to believe that the company would make that much of a mistake, while editing the books. If they had, Tolkien would have written about it probably somewhere in his Letters.

Moot has a number of meanings related to the discussion of ideas. First, as a noun, it has an archaic English (i.e. used in England) definition as a rural meeting. Then more currently, as an adjective, a sense to describe a point that is open to argument, e.g. this point is moot, and another to indicate that a point has no practical significance. Finally, moot can be used as a verb in both senses to bring a question into discussion or consign it to being of no further worth discussing. Then of course, there is the moot court, used in law schools as a fictitious institution in which to argue hypothetical or moot cases.

Therefore, moot is the obvious choice to describe a meeting of Ents, who more than anything, love to spend large amounts of time considering an issue from all directions, and I am sure that Tolkien used the word intentionally.

Moot is the word he meant to use. It actually means something very similar to the idea of an "Ent Meet" as you called it. This particular use of the word moot stopped being used decades ago, but existed for the time of Tolkein. Since the story of LotR is archaic, it makes sense to use this word.

One of the definitions of moot is...
<font size=1 color=339966>[ 8:27 AM February 03, 2004: Message edited by: Kransha ]