backwoods
I used to get confused by the saying "a moot point" which means it's trivial, taken for granted, not worth debating. And then there are moot contests at law schools- debating teams :)
"Moot" means "meeting" in Old English/Anglo Saxon. The moot was originally the gathering of all the people that would decide important issues and settle disputes, later as the many small English kingdoms merged into fewer larger ones it became the meeting to which representatives were sent rather than the entire population turning up. The equivalent of a "council" or "parliament" (witenagamot).
A moot point eventually came to mean something complicated, the details of which could be argued about for ever despite everyone basically agreeing on what needed to be done. Or everyone knowing that there's no point in discussing it, but some people are going to bang on for ages about it anyway.
Tolkien's entmoot is a good example of the process, and the outraged ents later forgetting all about their carefully debated decision and setting off to smash up Saruman anyway is an example of something being a "moot point".
(this service provided by trivia'r'us)