This is one of those cases where the popular (initially incorrect) use of the word has far outstripped the one this link mentions.

It's like the word 'literally' (whose bastardization is both far more egregious and hilarious)

Even Google now reflects the 'incorrect' use of beg as the primary meaning of it:

    beg - raise a question or point that has not been dealt with; invite an obvious question

Unfortunate, but true.

The "problem" with "begs the question" is that makes literal sense. Then there are people who know that phrase from something and apparently once a phrase is used somewhere it can't be used in any other context to mean anything else.

There is no problem here as long it isn't being applied to the wrong logical fallacy.

A guy walks into a bar with a duck on his head, which begs the question, "why is there a duck on his head?" (be asked.)

"Begging" and "asking for" are commonly used to anthropomorphize situations. "The ball spinning on the goal line was begging to be tapped in." "With John's attitude, he was was just asking to be fired."

Nothing wrong with the phrase at all. It is consistent with other common usages.

Maybe it's the phrase used in the logical fallacy that doesn't make sense.

Yup.

The hweird logical-fallacy use of "begging the question" is a mistranslation.

It goes back to Aristotle, who talked about "τὸ ἐξ ἀρχῆς", meaning "asking for the first thing". That is: you're debating some proposition X, which in the rhetorical terminology of the time was called "the first thing" (imagine that you're holding an actual debate, and you start by saying: The question before us is whether X), and the logical fallacy is when, in the course of arguing for X, you assume (ask us to accept -- ask for) X, the "first thing".

So far, so good.

So after the age when Serious Thinking was done in Greek came the age when Serious Thinking was done in Latin. Aristotle's term was translated to "petitio principii". The first word means "assuming" in mediaeval Latin but "asking for" in classical Latin. The second word means "first thing", a rather literal translation of the Greek.

So far, still so good.

And then, some time in the 16th century, some genius decided to translate the term into English and (1) render "petitio" as "asking for" ("begging") rather than "assuming", and (2) render "principii" as "question" instead of "first thing". Presumably they did #1 because "asking for" is one meaning of "petitio", even though it's not the one that's relevant here. Presumably they did #2 because in a debate (which, again, was the original context for the term) "the question" means whatever proposition you're debating.

The result of which is the ridiculous term we have now. The common usage of the phrase to mean "raising the question" is a much better thing for "begging the question" to mean. Personally, I mostly avoid using the term at all because some people will think it means "raising the question" and think I'm weird and pedantic if I use it to mean "arguing in a circle", while other people will think it means "arguing in a circle" and think I'm ignorant if I use it to mean "raising the question". (So it's an example of what Fowler called a "skunked" term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunked_term.)

Haha brilliant, thank you for that etymology trace and the Skunked Term phrase! Good stuff.

Also do something on accident (instead of by accident).

And the word softwares (software is correct for the plural form).

> It's like the word 'literally' (whose bastardization is both far more egregious and hilarious)

"literally" has been used to mean "figuratively" for hundreds of years, by plenty of famous authors. The idea that "literally" should only mean "actually; without exaggeration or inaccuracy" seems to be the actual recent invention.

The problem is that we need a way to say "actually; without exaggeration or inaccuracy" succinctly. Also, to say "I am using an idiom, but non-idiomatically."

"Literally" should be that tool. I understand that a word's meaning is, by definition, what people mean when they say it, but it is frustrating to have this communication tool drift away with nothing to replace it.

As another commenter said, this same thing happened to "very" and "really" in the past. So maybe it's time to let "literally" go and make up a new word for it?

> but it is frustrating to have this communication tool drift away with nothing to replace it.

My point is that it isn't "drifting away"—it has been used as an intensifier for hundreds of years.

Mostly a question of euphemism drift (or rhetorical drift, if that's a thing) -- "really" and "very" are former terms that meant "without exaggeration or inaccuracy" but slowly drifted towards a rhetoric use.

Interesting.

(That's another one that tends to mean the opposite)

Wait, was this a burn? Ouch.

Hah, honestly I think I replied to the wrong thing.

What is the point of the word literally then? What information does it convey if not to say that it is actually, without exaggeration?

> What is the point of the word literally then?

I don't think words have a point.

> What information does it convey if not to say that it is actually, without exaggeration?

Sometimes it does convey that. And sometimes it's merely an intensifier. Lots of words are like that.

Nah. "Beg the question" is used as a term of art in academia to mean one thing, but it is also used in common parlance to mean something else.

See also 'fruit', and whether or not tomatoes are displayed in the vegetable aisle.

Off topic, but well, as the saying goes, "Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad."

Botanically it's a fruit. Culinary its uses are more aligned with those of a vegetable.

Fruits and vegetables aren't opposite things. Fruit is a term of art in botany, but it's lay usage is fairly close to that. The word vegetable can be fairly broad to include almost any edible part of a plant. This is why I'm a vegetarian and not a vegetarian and fruitarian.

Culinary vegetable is often used as a "soft opposite" of fruit because they often require different preparations and uses.

The interesting thing about "begs the question" is that it's a matter of who is doing the begging (asking). Classically your answer is asking for your premise, so you're sort of working backwards and likely circularly. In modern usage, the answer is asking for more research.

Sometimes people use it to mean dodging a question, which I'm not quite sure why and would consider wrong usage.

Thanks for the information, I am a non-native speaker and only picked up the expression from the net. I have to admit though, that I fail to understand the reasoning on that page other than "it means something different".

People who complain about this are mostly just being preciously prescriptivist, and they typically do a shockingly poor job of explaining the issue.

To "beg the question", canonically, is to argue in a way that only makes sense if whatever you're arguing to support is true. It's a difficult sort of fallacy to provide examples for because it's quite rare, so most examples you see tend to be constructed for the sake of complaining about the supposed misuse of the phrase "beg the question", and so either trivial or incomprehensible or both.

Too, the phrase "beg the question" itself relies on a rather outmoded sense of the word "beg", whose rarity in modern usage makes the prescribed meaning of the phrase very difficult to intuit compared to the supposedly incorrect one.

All of which begs the question: why should anyone care what complaints linguistic prescriptivists make in the case of this phrase, any more than in the case of any other?

Someone mistranslated Latin into English 300 years ago and now some nerds are mad that people are misinterpreting the mistranslation. Best to just ignore the whole thing by never writing "begging the question." Always write either "raising the question" or "circular reasoning" depending on what you mean.

It's somewhat like the phrase "it beggars belief" - it means that 'belief' is left in a very poor condition, begging alms ...

Don't sweat it, it's a common error made by native speakers too, myself included until I learned about it. :)

It's really not an error anymore because it's been in common usage for years.

Let them be. If we didn't have prescriptivists, everything would literally mean nothing.

And if that was the common usage that people agreed on and understood, that would be perfectly fine. It's literally how language works!

"You need better pickup lines. An introduction like that begs a slap in the face."

"Stay away from that switch! Running the factory lights at night begs a German bomb right on top of us."

"I beg your pardon?"

"That's an interesting link, but it begs the question, 'why does an archaic idiom invalidate the plain meaning of a phrase?'"

The English language is well prepared to deal with ambiguities. There are countless words and phrases with multiple meanings. This one is not even confusing! One is always followed by the question it raises, which makes it quite obvious what they meant.

Improper user of "begs the question" is like nails on chalkboard for me. Still, this has to be the best counterargument I've read. Well done.

This is my only grammatical pet peeve, so thanks for the link. I'll be posting that around some. :)

It's daft wrong-headed prescriptivism contrary to all common sense and usage. It just screams "I don't care about actual language, just silly pedantry".

The reason it's my pet peeve is because I use "begging the question" in its correct form all the time to describe an otherwise difficult concept. Once you put a name on something, it's much easier to understand and talk about. But when the name is confused with a much simpler concept "raising the question", it kills the original meaning so I have to explain the concept in far more words. For example, "The man is assuming a fact for granted and using a fact that follows in order to prove the original fact." is much more wordy than saying "The man is begging the question."

Never knew that. Today I learned something!

I like to be a grammar Nazi as much as the next guy, but honestly I'm over this one.

It seems that the logical fallacy definition of "begs the question" has now become a recursive example of question begging itself. The only reason it means self-referencing argument is because 10% of the population believes it does. I'm half-convinced this was all just some linguist's April Fool's prank gone awry.

The reality is the literal definition of "begs the question" is commonly accepted, well understood, and frankly, makes a hell of lot more sense. I'm fairly certain that it is the only definition for that term that is held by a majority of English speakers. If that doesn't make it the official definition, then what does? There is no English Language Preservation Organization. If most people think that is what it means, then that is what it means.

You're doing God's work. That site is hilarious.

begs the question has multiple meanings now because we say it does.