Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by haffla | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

haffla

Being a non native in English I'm really grateful for this comment. I've never really understood this BTQ expression.

View on HN

99% of English speakers do not understand it either, and misuse it constantly.

Maybe they use their own language perfectly fine and it's the meaning of the idiom that has changed?

Language can both be wrong to its original meaning and also accepted.

Hopefully the parent of your post was joking - the site he linked to is a "joke" site - but either way, it's misleading and unhelpful (particularly to non-English speakers) to pretend that "begs the question" was used incorrectly there by tehabe. It wasn't.

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/beg-the-q...

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/beg-the...

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/beg%20the%20questi...

I understand that language is dynamic, and colloquial misuse turns into accepted use, and so nonplussed means unimpressed and disinterested means uninterested, but with this expression I will stand with the pedants and the original meaning.

Prepare for a long, frustrating stand. Professional writers and journalists misuse it 100% of the times I have seen it used. I have seen a single person in my entire life use it correctly, and it was a random forum post about something stupid like a video game.

Also, you can add "droll" to the long list of misused words.

I think the same way about droll as I do begs the question.[1]

I don't see the point of insisting the original/archaic meaning of a word is 'correct' if, in the English-speaking world we live in today, essentially nobody uses it or understands it in that sense.

[1] I certainly do not think the same about nonplussed, however. I've never heard that word being used for unimpressed before, but it appears to be simply an Americanism; one I hope never catches on elsewhere.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/nonplus...

Of professional writers, I find that droll is used correctly maybe half the time. Which is frustrating, because either definition is a polar opposite and has a pretty profound effect on a scene. It's only from context several sentences later do you figure out which definition they meant.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com