Begging the question of whether to use "begging the question"
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The tweets above have extra salience for me, because I used begs the question in the traditional way ('assumes the answer to the question in dispute') in my most recent post on LAWnLinguistics. I did so with some trepidation—not because I was worried that someone would think I was using the phrase wrong, but because I was worried that someone would think I was using it in the 'raise the question' sense and wonder what the question was that I thought was being begged.
The cause of that worry wasn't that I thought my use of beg the question was ambiguous. Although beg the question is ambiguous in isolation, when it is used in a sentence, the intended use is pretty much always made clear by the context. When begs the question is used in in the sense of 'raises the question', it's always followed by a phrase specifying the question that is being begged/raised: begs the question of whether…, begs the question, why does… and so on. But when begs the question is used in the traditional sense of 'assumes the conclusion', it's always begs the question full stop (or colon or semicolon).
Rather than being afraid of ambiguity, I was afraid that some readers would simply be unaware that the phrase has any meaning other than 'raises the question'. That meaning's spread is evidence that lots of people don't know what begs the question originally meant. That lack of knowledge is not surprising, given that the expression is semantically opaque—its original meaning is difficult to figure out if you don't already know it—and many people inhabit social and work environments in which they're unlikely to be exposed to the word being used in its original sense.
But despite my trepidation, I decided that using the phrase that way would be reasonably safe. I figured that anyone with enough interest in law and linguistics to read a blog about it would be likely to know the original meaning.
That was last night, and this morning I saw the tweet by Jonathon Owen at the top of this post. Timing! Serendipity! Synchronicity! The universe was guiding me to a topic for a Language Log post.
So I came here and started writing. After I had gotten about a paragraph down, it occurred to me that I should check to see what had already been written here on the topic of begs the question. And I was not surprised to discover that Mark had written (at least) three excellent posts. As a public service, here they are:
"Begging the question": we have answers
"Begging the question" we have examples
It begs the way we see the world
If you only have time to read one of these posts, go for the first one, in which Mark begs and discusses four questions:
First, how did "begging the question" come to be a technical term for (a certain kind of) circular reasoning? Second, do people really need a way to talk about circular reasoning, anyway? Third, why did "begging the question" get re-purposed in common usage to mean "dodging the question" or "raising the question", rather than simply subsiding, along with the rest of the terminology of medieval logic, into the midden heap of obsolete idioms? And fourth, should you go with the flow and use "beg the question" to mean "raise the question", or should you fight for the traditional usage, or what?
In answering the third question, Mark noted that "'begging the question' is such a confusing way to say it that only a few pedants understand the phrase in this sense any more." And of course, he provided evidence:
You can see that this is true by looking at how the phrase is used, even in well-edited sources. For example, if we search the NYT index for recent uses of "beg the question", we find that out of the first 20 hits, 15 use "beg the question" to mean "raise the question" — and of the five that don't, four are usage articles berating people for misusing the phrase!
At the end of his post, Mark assumed the unusual (for him) role of usage advisor, and recommended against using begs the question at all, even in its traditional sense. "If you use the phrase to mean 'assume the conclusion'" he said, "almost no one will understand you."
I was curious to see whether Bryan Garner made a similar recommendation, so I checked the most recent iteration of his usage manual. I wasn't surprised to see that he described the use of the 'raise the question' sense as a mistake. But it was a little surprising that Garner completely failed to address the question that is begged by Mark's advice: can begs the question still be used in its traditional sense without creating the risk of not being understood? Garner sums up the situation this way:
[The] use of beg the question to mean raise another question is so ubiquitous that the new sense has been recognized by most dictionaries and sanctioned by descriptive observers of the language. Still, though it is true that the new sense may be understood by most people, many will consider it slipshod.
Mark had similarly advised against using begs the question in its 'raise the question' sense, and for similar reasons (though the judgmental language in his explanation was aimed at a different group of targets): "If you use the phrase to mean 'raise the question', some pedants will silently dismiss you as a dunce, while others will complain loudly, thus distracting everyone else from whatever you wanted to say."
But what's more interesting about Garner's entry is that his only (implicit) advice is to avoid using beg the question in its newer sense unless you want to risk your prose being regarded as slipshod. While it's not surprising that he would give that his advice, it's strange that despite recognizing that the new meaning is "ubiquitous," he apparently hasn't considered the possibility that the reason for the new sense's ubiquity is that most people don't know the old sense. Although Garner regards it as important that one not be considered guilty of slipshod usage, he also regards it as important that one write in such a way as to be easily understood.
Speaking of being easily understood, you'll recall from earlier in this post that in my LAWnLinguistics post, I used begs the question in its traditional sense. But during the drafting of this post, I went back to the LnL post and changed it. "Begs the question", Out. "Takes it for granted that…", In.
YMMV.
DaveK said,
February 28, 2018 @ 7:05 pm
"Raise the question" is such a simple, clear expression that I can't understand why it got replaced? Is it some mental confusion with "beg to differ"? A desire to sound trendy? A combination of these?
Robert said,
February 28, 2018 @ 7:34 pm
I have two opinions here that may seem at odds with each other: to the prescriptivists, I say "pah!". And, possibly, "fie!". The good ship Assumed Conclusion has long since sailed, and I don't think it's coming back in its original form. I heard the phrase used in its current meaning on an archive episode of the Reith Lectures on the BBC from fifty years ago; surely long enough for any budding pedants to accept that their cause is lost.
Having said that, I see no reason not to continue using the phrase with its original meaning. As a descriptor of rhetoric it's very useful, and when used thusly there's rarely – if ever – any ambiguity. Those who are aware of both meanings will have no trouble discerning which is meant. As for those who don't… well, I confess I don't really have an answer here, except to suggest that it's rarely a good idea to avoid a word or phrase simply because you fear the masses are too ignorant.
Roscoe said,
February 28, 2018 @ 7:36 pm
Here's an advice columnist defending his use of "beg the question" on the grounds that it hits the right note of "puppy-dog enthusiasm":
https://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2393/would-i-find-vaudeville-on-a-map/
AntC said,
February 28, 2018 @ 7:40 pm
A desire to sound trendy?
Compare what's happened to "oxymoron" — another obscure term from rhetoric/traditional stylistics. I guess it gets extra trendiness from the "-moron". It nowadays means 'contradiction in terms', also a simple, clear phrase not needing replacing.
Whereas if I nowadays want to refer to the (intriguing) way that "a deafening silence" means what it means, I have to avoid "oxymoron", so lack a snappy phrase. (Something similar's happened to "paradox", whose meaning has drifted towards 'contradiction'. Nowadays to be sure, I have to say 'apparent contradiction'.)
I also loved the way "oxymoron" ('cleverly foolish') was itself an oxymoron.
I agree with Neal that I would avoid "begs the question" in the medieval dialectics sense: If we're worried about simple, clear expressions, "circular reasoning" is far better.
And welcome, Neal, to LLog. I'm enjoying your posts.
Peter said,
February 28, 2018 @ 8:39 pm
@DaveK: at a guess, one of the reasons that "begging" the question has gained in popularity is that it has the advantage of sounding more emphatic than "raising" the question. The concept of begging, which is in many contexts associated with a sense of desperation, perhaps more strongly suggests that the circumstances *compel* that the question be asked.
Jerry Friedman said,
February 28, 2018 @ 11:06 pm
Peter: I agree. "Beg" is often used for emphasis of something appropriate, as in a list of "5 Romances Just Begging for a Film Adaptation". Some point doesn't merely raise a question, it begs (for) the question.
Neal Goldfarb: Conspicuous by its absence from Garner's comment, in my opinion, is that "beg the question" could be an example of what he calls "skunked": Some people won't understand the old sense and other people will disapprove of the new sense. That's why Mark Liberman recommended avoiding the phrase. However, Garner might feel that one can use the old sense to the right audience, as you did. Anyway, that's how I feel, and why shouldn't he agree with me?
Andrew Usher said,
March 1, 2018 @ 12:11 am
I'm sure I've heard and understood the 'raising the question' sense. But I'm quite sure I could never use in any but the traditional sense (and, of course, rarely), not because of peevery but because that's how I learned it. I've never understood why people say the old meaning is opaque – it uses existing senses of 'beg' and 'question', it wasn't invented to be opaque!
As this post says, it's not really ambiguous anyway between the two meanings. 'That argument just begs the question' is quite different from 'That begs the question of/whether …' – nor do I have any sympathy for people that don't know the logical meaning. It's an idiom, yes, but one found in every dictionary and not hard to understand. It fills a real gap, because 'circular reasoning' is not adequate when the premiss isn't exactly the same as the conclusion, or your opponent can't see or won't admit that it is; to use 'begging the question' it's enough that it is _essentially_ equivalent.
k_over_hbarc at yahoo.com
Andreas Johansson said,
March 1, 2018 @ 2:51 am
DaveK wrote:
"Raise the question" is such a simple, clear expression that I can't understand why it got replaced?
Has it really gotten replaced? I mean, obviously many people now use "beg the question" in the same sense, but people haven't stopped using "raise the question", have they? If I used it, would anyone think I'm old-fashioned or hard to understand?
(Personally, I avoid using "beg the question" at all. If "raise the question" is obsolescent, maybe I should reconsider that.)
tangent said,
March 1, 2018 @ 4:58 am
Rather than say "begging the question" I'd just go direct to call out what they assumed that they shouldn't assume.
I do think it's a useful distinction from "circular reasoning" which suggests a logical foul; question-begging is a pragmatics foul. A syllogism is logically dandy, but you assumed Socrates is a man when that's part of the debate: I say he's a cyborg.
Ray said,
March 1, 2018 @ 7:40 am
this is like how "fifth wheel" has been replaced by "third wheel." I once recently overheard someone say into her cellphone "–and they treated me like SH*T! like I was a goddam THIRD WHEEL!" whereupon I spun around and wondered what kind of vehicle she was referring to.
so then I googled. turns out, it's all the fault of our media, churning out movies and teevee episodes with "third wheel" in their titles since the early 2000s!
Mr Punch said,
March 1, 2018 @ 8:11 am
Ray's comment is interesting – a third wheel (which adds stability) is functionally different, in real life, from a pretty-much-pointless fifth wheel. The "third wheel" usage is surely more ambiguous/weaker.
Sili said,
March 1, 2018 @ 8:19 am
The question is whether you meant to paint refined gold, when you gilded the lily in your next post.
Ray:
A curricle. At least in danish.
Philip L. said,
March 1, 2018 @ 8:22 am
My advice as usual: follow Lewis Caroll: take care of the sense and the sounds will take care of themselves.
languagehat said,
March 1, 2018 @ 8:38 am
But what's more interesting about Garner's entry is that his only (implicit) advice is to avoid using beg the question in its newer sense unless you want to risk your prose being regarded as slipshod. While it's not surprising that he would give that his advice, it's strange that despite recognizing that the new meaning is "ubiquitous," he apparently hasn't considered the possibility that the reason for the new sense's ubiquity is that most people don't know the old sense. Although Garner regards it as important that one not be considered guilty of slipshod usage, he also regards it as important that one write in such a way as to be easily understood.
This is classic Garner; he pretends to be concerned with actual up-to-date usage ("I've moved this from Stage 2 to Stage 3, sound the trumpets, I'm down with the zeitgeist!") but in fact he's just another pedant clinging desperately to the usage of past centuries. He cares about being understood, but he cares a hell of a lot more about not being "slipshod." His essay "Making Peace in the Language Wars" is one of the most disingenuous pieces of bad-faith arguing I've ever seen. I continue to fail to understand why people consult him except to find out what the classier among the peevers think. (I except his writings on legal English, wherein he is both eloquent and an expert.)
ardj said,
March 1, 2018 @ 9:40 am
@siri: jeg kan ikke finde "curricle" i Politiken, bare i Meyers Fremeddordbog (kabriolet til to heste). Mener det også noget andet ?
Sili said,
March 1, 2018 @ 9:55 am
På dansk er køretøjet en gig, men jeg kunne ikke finde en direkte oversættelse uden at rejse mig, så jeg valgte den første og bedste tohjulede hestevogn, jeg fandt på Wikipædia.
Sili said,
March 1, 2018 @ 9:57 am
http://ordnet.dk/ddo/ordbog?query=gig
http://danskeudtryk.dk/vaere-tredje-hjul-i-en-gig/
Robert Coren said,
March 1, 2018 @ 10:25 am
My guess is that "begs the question" for "raises the question" arose because the phrase was already out there (in its original sense), and people had heard it without completely understanding that original sense, and so naturally adapted it to what it sounds like it means to a modern ear.
sugarloaf said,
March 1, 2018 @ 12:31 pm
Nothing for it, I'll have to stick with petitio principii. Mind you, even there, there is the risk of ignotum per ignotius. What a thicket of thorns! (And what's the Latin for "thicket of thorns"?)
Stan Carey said,
March 1, 2018 @ 1:17 pm
A couple of years ago I ran some quick numbers on this, curious about just how many times beg the question is used in its traditional sense. The results will not please the peevers: 90% "raise the question", more or less, from 300 examples in GloWbe. In philosophical texts the petitio principii sense is more robust, but in general usage the figures suggest a resounding rejection, or ignorance, of that usage. I avoid using the phrase altogether.
===Dan said,
March 1, 2018 @ 1:28 pm
I'm with Mark (even before I read the post).
I'd avoid "begs the question" for any purpose whatsoever. It's an idiom, it's a cliched phrase, and is used only because it is a cliche. There's no "begging" involved in the sense of what a panhandler does. There's no need to use the word "beg" either when raising a question or presuming its answer. I'd eschew the phrase even if there's no concern that anyone will misunderstand it, but that's another good reason to rephrase.
( I'd see no point in correcting anybody's use of the phrase either. )
languagehat said,
March 1, 2018 @ 1:31 pm
It's an idiom, it's a cliched phrase, and is used only because it is a cliche.
Do you avoid all idioms and cliched phrases, speaking and writing only in unique creations? That must be exhausting.
===Dan said,
March 1, 2018 @ 1:41 pm
That must be exhausting. No, it doesn't take a lot of effort to not use a phrase. I am not a strict cliche-eschewer, and I'm sure I've turned many stale phrases in my writing, but I think avoiding cliche is a good objective.
languagehat said,
March 1, 2018 @ 1:45 pm
Sure, I agree; I'm just curious about what distinguishes "beg the question" from, say, "hot potato" or "back to the drawing board" or "best of both worlds" or any other idiom/cliche that you feel free to use as seems appropriate (if you never use any of those, substitute whatever works for you).
===Dan said,
March 1, 2018 @ 3:31 pm
I'm not sure. I don't know that I have any pet cliches, but I'm sure I use them. (I was going to say "from time to time" but now I'm hyperconscious of cliched phrases.) I do think there's something that makes "begs the question" different from "hot potato." Maybe the former sounds like jargon to me– a technical cliche.
Jerry Friedman said,
March 1, 2018 @ 4:07 pm
By the way, one can always say "beg for the question" for the new sense of "beg the question".
I suppose that begs for the question, "Will anyone think you meant arguing in a circle?"
BZ said,
March 1, 2018 @ 4:52 pm
RE: third wheel: presumably a(n unwanted) third party. I sometimes find it hard to use "fifth wheel" where a party of less than four is concerned. I wouldn't ever say "third wheel", but I see a certain transposition-type logic there.
Elizabeth Yew said,
March 1, 2018 @ 8:23 pm
I once read the phrase "prompts the query," which I interpreted as the writer's exaggerated avoidance of the incorrect use of "beg the question."
Brett said,
March 1, 2018 @ 9:48 pm
I don't use "beg the question" in either sense, but I do have a peeve about it: I don't like people acting snooty about using "petitio principii" instead. I think that if you're going to make a point to use a foreign phrase, you ought to go back the actual original, in Greek.
Barbara Phillips Long said,
March 1, 2018 @ 10:20 pm
I am sorry Garner did not simply conclude by saying that "beg the question" is a skunked term and move on. From my editing perspective, the term is useless if the reader has to stop dead and reread the text or parse the meaning each time "beg the question" appears.
Ray said,
March 1, 2018 @ 11:45 pm
question: were my googled results for "third wheel" begging the question?
Sili:
ok, but do curricles come with spare third wheels?
Thomas Shaw said,
March 1, 2018 @ 11:56 pm
Re the discussion of DaveK and Peter, earlier (and possibly Robert Coren ?).
"Raise the question" is such a simple, clear expression that I can't understand why it got replaced?
I would guess that "raises the question" actually followed the new usage of "begs the question", i.e. that as the new usage became popular, people who knew the old usage sought an easy alternative that didn't conflict. I'd be curious about whether there was/were (an) alternative(s) in common usage before that time. Was there an alternative, that went out of style? Or was there no fixed phrase for this purpose, and people just invented appropriate phrases like "makes you wonder", "suggests that you ask", when it came up. Or was it less common to express this kind of idea?
FWIW, Ngrams only attests "raises the question " since 1948: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22raises+the+question+%22%2C%22begs+the+question+%22&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=0&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2C%22%20raises%20the%20question%20%22%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2C%22%20begs%20the%20question%20%22%3B%2Cc0
===Dan said,
March 2, 2018 @ 12:00 am
That query didn't work for me, because the quotation marks were taken literally. I removed them here (and used a Google URL shortener): https://goo.gl/MsQSpW
===Dan said,
March 2, 2018 @ 12:00 am
That query didn't work for me, because the quotation marks were taken literally. I removed them here (and used a Google URL shortener): https://goo.gl/MsQSpW
===Dan said,
March 2, 2018 @ 12:01 am
(I submitted that only once!)
Thomas Shaw said,
March 2, 2018 @ 12:29 am
===Dan
Ah, I see. That makes the pattern look a lot different. Still, though, even for some time before 1800, "begs the question" was substantially more popular than "raises the question". Do we have any information about when the new usage of "begs…" became common?
Stephen said,
March 2, 2018 @ 7:46 am
@ Mr Punch
"a third wheel (which adds stability) is functionally different, in real life, from a pretty-much-pointless fifth wheel"
I take it that you have never had a flat tyre and needed the spare (or fifth) wheel that most cars come with!
Dagwood said,
March 2, 2018 @ 10:46 am
I once heard the Colonel Jack O'Neill ("with two L's") character use the phrase "And that begets the question…" in an episode of the old Stargate series. I assumed the script had contained the phrase "begs the question," but that actor Richard Dean Anderson was educated enough to reject it, coming up with his own substitute phrase.
However, now that I've googled "begets the question", I see that that phrase gets 136,000 results — some of which suggest that the current, ubiquitous sense of "begs the question" is a bastardization of "begets the question".
TIC said,
March 2, 2018 @ 2:16 pm
I'm with commenter Barbara Phillips Long, I b'lieve… It's unfortunate, but the expression has become so skunked that I'd avoid in almost any context… To me, the myriad potential downsides to using it, in either sense, outweigh any upsides of using it, except in the most select contexts… It's also an unfortunate truth that there's perhaps no similarly terse alternative (for either of the senses) that can be universally substituted… So a context-specific circumlocution is often necessary… Oh well; I can live with that…
Re: the fifth-vs.-third wheel controversy (please forgive me if this has already been said and I missed it) in my experience the tendency to want to say third is because the situation so often (most often?) arises when one is contemplating being an awkward tag-along to a couple (a twosome)…
TIC said,
March 2, 2018 @ 2:36 pm
And (to conclude) the inherent logic of saying "third (bad thing)" overrides much if any consideration of the expression's origin(al) logic…
Xtifr said,
March 2, 2018 @ 5:37 pm
I've been looking at this one for a while (informally–I have no plan to publish a paper or anything like that), and my conclusion is that the people who say this is just a synonym for "raises the question" are displaying a tin ear for nuance.
Not that there would be anything wrong if it were just a synonym. But I don't believe it is. When I've noticed examples "in the wild", there's usually a sense of, not "this could be asked," but "this should be asked."
It reminds me of another common phrase: "he was begging for it." As in, "he wouldn't stop being rude, so I contemplated hitting him." Except, in this case, it would be more like "he was being obviously evasive, so I contemplated asking a pointed question."
As for the idea that it's skunked, I see it used far too often even in formal writing to buy that. Unless you're looking for some reason to look down on large groups of reasonably intelligent people, and bolster your own ego, I can't think of any reason to complain about the new, standard meaning.
Christian Weisgerber said,
March 3, 2018 @ 9:32 am
@Dagwood
And if you click through and try to view those results, you'll find that they peter out on page 17 or so after some 170 hits.
I feel like a broken record pointing this out, but people need to realize that those initial figures Google shows are meaningless estimates that can be, and frequently are, wrong by several orders of magnitude.
Victoria Simmons said,
March 3, 2018 @ 11:33 am
For "raise the question," I tend to use "invites the question" or "compels the question," both of which suggest the force I assume is intended by "begs." But I only avoid "begs the question" out of self-consciousness, not because I think anything is wrong with it.
The students in my Critical Thinking course have a hard time remembering what "begs the question" means compared to, say, "No True Scotsman" or "Slippery Slope," because the phrase doesn't translate very easily in their minds to "assumes the very point that is in dispute." To them it sounds as if someone is begging someone to ask a question.
Because of this, I have discussed the phrase with a small sample of college-instructor friends and I have found that all of them understand the technical meaning of the phrase "begs the question," and may even insist on its "correct" use, without knowing why those particular words are used in the phrase. The speaker is in effect asking ("begging") the opponent to yield the very point ("question") that is in dispute. Yet those guilty of this error are not usually aware they are committing it, so they are begging without knowing they are begging. Is it any wonder that even many people who have had a brush with the phrase in its more technical sense use it also in the now-common sense? Or that prior exposure to the common sense may interfere with learning the technical sense?
Other errors in argument are more felicitously named. "Begging the question" is not a very useful translation of "petitio principii," which itself is vague. (And the Greek isn't much more clear.) In a world that has converted "False Dichotomy" to "Black-and-White Fallacy," mightn't it be better to rename "begging the question" as "assuming the point," or some such?
languagehat said,
March 3, 2018 @ 11:38 am
mightn't it be better to rename "begging the question" as "assuming the point," or some such?
Of course it would, and sensible people have long done so. The only reason to hang on to the unintelligible version is a desire to rub one's superior education in the faces of the hoi polloi. (And if anyone is tempted to say "Actually, the is redundant in that phrase!" — "hoi polloi" peevers are even worse than "beg the question" peevers.)
Jason M said,
March 4, 2018 @ 1:09 pm
@Christian – in your experience is there systemic or random error in Ngrams? Meaning, say, that if the hits count returns 130K but is in fact only 170 that another query returning 1.3M hits would yield only 1700 verifiable ones, or does it vary randomly? Is the total count always an overestimate? I am in biomedical science — ie, not a linguistics-related field — but use Ngrams occasionally to chart usage of scientific terms and would like to have some general concept of the type of error in the data.
[Sorry to divert from the thread at hand, but Christian's comment about Ngrams just prompted this query/ begat this question/ begged me to ask him…. Seriously, though, to add my voice, my prescriptivist, journalist father has been bitching for decades about misuse of "begs the question", but I would say 98% of my colleagues in biological sciences have no clue about the original usage; moreover, they would be confused by it, possibly because in biology or medicine we don't typically engage in debates where one can accuse another of begging the question in a rhetorical sense, so I consider the phrase skunked and edit it out of any writing I have editorial jurisdiction over. (I approve, however, of ending sentences with prepositions and am compelled to gleefully split an infinitive whenever an occasion arises, as I defiantly flout hypercorrection whereas find myself more forgiving about evolving usage)]
Bloix said,
March 4, 2018 @ 10:10 pm
Bryan Garner gives advice to people who write for judges – a population considerably older and more peevish than the general public. When you have an audience of one (or perhaps three, or in extremely rare cases nine), and that audience's irritable reaction to your writing can be catastrophic, it is prudent to observe even the deadest and most insupportable usage rules.
Neal Goldfarb said,
March 4, 2018 @ 10:26 pm
@Bloix:
That's certainly the conventional wisdom, but I think that good writing will overcome judicial usage peeves. I've certainly never gotten any adverse feedback from using contractions or splitting infinitives.
Though now that I think about it, there are a few cases where that might be a better explanation for why I lost than what the judges said in the opinion. Like the one where they confused Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland.
languagehat said,
March 5, 2018 @ 8:34 am
Bryan Garner gives advice to people who write for judges
Nonsense. I mean, he does, of course; that's what his legal books are for, and if he confined his peevery to them I'd have no issue with it. But Garner's Modern American Usage is marketed to everyone, and it's billed as "the authority on grammar, style, and usage." (For my sins, I have two editions of it, as well as Garner on Language and Writing and Garner's Dictionary of Legal Usage.) If he's going to give ridiculously antiquated advice to all comers, he can't hide behind his legal robes.
tinroof said,
March 5, 2018 @ 3:09 pm
My advice would be to avoid this arcane, archaic custom at all times. The only person I ever knew who used "beg the question" in the "correct" sense was a brilliant and thoroughly pedantic classmate of mine in law school. The reason the phrase is so misused is that it was so ridiculously highbrow to begin with. Who indeed needs a specialized phrase to talk about circular reasoning. I don't. And I know if I do use it in either sense it will be misunderstood by someone, either the educated pedants or the rest of humanity who have no idea of the "correct" original meaning. This is a case where the only sensible approach is to avoid "begging the question" at all costs.