> I feel similarly with the phrase "beg the question", which in common usage now means simply "raises the question" or "invites the question". It doesn't bother me because I think people who use it this way are stupid; it bothers me because there is no synonym for "begs the question" which is equally succinct.

Since the original sense of "begs the question" is inherently intransitive, and the modern sense is inherently transitive (and, further, the original sense can be rationalized as an intransitive version of the modern sense where the implied object is the proposition that the argument was attempting to justify), there is no conflict between the original and modern sense, so I don't see the problem.

Also, the original sense of "begs the question" can be equivalently stated as "is a circular argument" which is nearly as succinct and uses words in something much more like there usual English senses, so even if the more modern sense of "begs the question" could create semantic ambiguity (which it can't, since its syntactically distinct), I still wouldn't agree that much useful was lost.