Grieve (grieve) wrote,
Grieve
grieve

Begs the Question.

I am sure that many times a day I write or speak in a grammatically poor way. I am probably even doing it in this post, but it really irritates me when I hear people use the phrase begs the question incorrectly. It irritates me even more when I hear it on TV or radio, and I hear it a lot on the show "Ugly Betty."

To beg the question is to use a circular argument to prove something, for example, "The best cars are VWs, because VW makes the best cars." It does not mean "raises the obvious question."

Sadly I know that what I type about it here will make little difference, since it has already taken root as a cliche to mean "raises the obvious question."

Even so I will continue to get irritated when I hear it.

And just for a fun: Logical Fallacies.
Tags: logic
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