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Comment by vinay_ys | Hacker News Reader

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vinay_ys·

Thanks for pointing out that wiki link. It lead me to another link

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/beg-the-questi...

which seems to indicate my usage is quite acceptable in modern English.

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Normalizing errors in language is how language degrades. We no longer have a word for literally, because people use literally to mean figuratively. We are losing the ability to talk about begging the question, because people think it means raising the question. The fact that English has degraded is not a reason to give up and let it get worse.

As a prescriptivist, surely you do not wish to assign "begging the question" that meaning then since it's wholly from a mistranslation from Latin https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2290

That information is also present in the Wikipedia link.

No, I do not wish to assign that meaning, that meaning was already assigned a long time ago. And you don't need to be a prescriptivist to want a language that is capable of communicating our thoughts with each other.

Haha, no, it's not a pejorative. It's literally one of two schools of thought: descriptivism vs. prescriptivism. What you're describing is prescriptivism.

I didn't suggest it was pejorative, and I know what it is. There are not two school of thought, that's a false dichotomy. That is like saying "there are two schools of thought, catholic and protestant". You can want to prevent the decline of language without insisting on trying to bring back already lost definitions like a prescriptivist.

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