I beg your pardon

I had the perfect chance today to address the "beg the question" issue. A colleague at the office asked me to analyze a client's response to a question...was the reply "circular?"

I replied that yes, it was circular and thanked her because it gave me a chance to say, "it addressed a pet-peeve of mine and begged the question."

As I left her office I was surrounded by three associates who'd heard me say, "one of my pet-peeves."

"We want to hear about [Scooter's] pet-peeves. This is always fun."

Glad I could provide so much entertainment.

For Michael

Begging the question from Mona Charen:

My children have started to become exacting grammarians. David, 15, is driven nearly crazy every time someone misuses the expression “beg the question.” It’s a good thing he is away on a band trip this week and didn’t catch a CNN report on the morning news. A story on the financial situation was phrased like this: “This begs the question: What happened to the TARP money?”

If David had been watching, he would have scowled at the screen and, voice raised, corrected the reporter. “It doesn’t ‘beg’ the question. It presents or suggests or poses the question. To beg the question is to avoid or circumvent it!” David is mostly right. “Beg the question” is widely misused. Michael Quinion of World Wide Words responded to a reader who asked whether it was ever correct to use the meaning David disdains. His answer is comprehensive. “You can easily find examples of the sense you quote, which is used just as though one might say ‘prompt the question’ or ‘forces one to ask’ . . . This meaning of the phrase seems to have grown up because people have turned for a model to other phrases in beg, especially the well-known I beg to differ, where beg is a fossil verb that actually used to mean ‘humbly submit.’ But the way we use beg to differ these days makes beg the question look the same as ‘wish to ask.’ It doesn’t — or at least, it didn’t. . . . The meaning you give is . . . gaining ground, and one or two recent dictionaries claim that it is now acceptable — the New Oxford Dictionary of English, for example, says it is ‘widely accepted in modern standard English.’ I wouldn’t go so far myself."

...

Begging the question....

Thankfully, Laura Ingraham says the point leads to the question rather than “begs the question” during her interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

For Michael

Jonah almost blew it on the "begs the question" issue, but he recovered. It is late in the discussion so it's probably not worth the listen.

Begging the fargin question

This week's hall of shame: (1) "Author and conservative comedian Brad Stine;" (2) Mike McDaniel of the Chronic;

and (3), well I don't have one (or do I?). This travesty is so widespread I thought I could get a weekly feature out of it, you know, three (surely not more) violations I saw THIS WEEK. Either I've not been paying attention or ... something. Anyway, I only had two, so I thought I'd cheat and google some news stories for "begs the question."

The result was shocking. Aussies, at least at 9 CDT, 4/24/06, seem to be the worst offenders.