He should have said "raises the question". " begs the question".means assuming the conclusion of your argument.
Since the phrasing is anachronistic, there's really no chance that they'll come up with 'asks you to accept as true' for 'begs,' and 'the conclusion' for 'the question.' But honestly, if you mean to say 'brings up the question' you should just say it, instead of reaching for an anachronistic pithy phrase or buzzword.
Time to update your dictionary!
Shouldn't we accept that words change in meaning over time? True, words like "cool" and "gay" gained new meaning via a process of modern association with their understood meanings, but BTQ abuse rises from a misunderstanding of its original use. It would be as though people started using "the die is cast" to mean dying, simply because the word "die" is in there, without any knowledge of Caesar. Is there any idiom -- not a single word, but a full phrase -- whose meaning has changed over the years, simply by virtue of its being misunderstood by the linguistically inept or the historically ignorant?
But language is constantly evolving. That's great to know! Descriptivist linguists, whom we do not fault for their stand, are quite free to watch as we bring about an evolution in the vernacular understanding of "begging the question."
Vector, moment, impulse, circuit, computer, etc. all have historic uses that are largely forgotten today or have different meanings in different contexts. Just because a usage is old, or specific to a certain context doesn't mean that usage should be universal or part of the common tongue. Arguing that language is fixed, and should never change is arguing from a special kind of gross ignorance -- the kind where a person has learned enough to think they know it all, but don't actually know anything in particular.
I think the phrase "know enough to be dangerous" comes to mind with most proscriptivists.
If you think I'm wrong, don't ever use vector again unless it's the one I personally think it the correct singular usage, and don't ever use computer unless you are talking about a person who performs calculations.
>Nobody uses it with that meaning anymore, the phrase has taken on a different meaning.
I hear it used in its original meaning as often as I hear it being used in the other way. Losing the original meaning would be a bad thing, because it describes something that is difficult to describe, whereas 'asks me to ask this following question" is just a wordy, empty transition when usually the entire phrase should be replaced with "so."
>[So,] just how far away can you get from our world of generic convenience? And how would you figure that out?
better?
You can do this experiment yourself. You will find that the new meaning is so common, so prevalent, that you'll be hard pressed to actually find an example of the old meaning in usage beyond correcting somebody using it in the new meaning.
It's not a zero-sum game. New meaning for words and phrases don't wipe out old meanings. That's why dictionaries developed this novel technique where they list alternate definitions for words -- because all of the definitions are valid because words and phrases can have more than one meaning.
when usually the entire phrase should be replaced with "so."
I don't disagree that "so" is a more concise transition. But it can get old fast when it's used all the time. It may even be better to just ask the question with no lead in at all.
I disagree that "it begs the question" categorically doesn't have a meaning beyond the one coined from a poor translation from a Latin translation of Aristotle's original Greek. Insisting that it can only mean the logical fallacy is ignorant on several kinds of levels and only shows how little the prescriptivist knows about the phrase and how language works in general. You'll find that most aren't even aware that the English phrase we use is not even a correct translation from the Latin and the Latin is not correctly translated from the Greek! It's like a perfect storm of compounded ignoramuses.
I think that most people don't care in the slightest how something Aristotle wrote in Greek was translated into Latin and then awkwardly translated from Latin into English in the 1500s, into an archaic predecessor of modern English that is almost but not quite intelligible to the modern ear. Prior Analytics is not the Bible, it doesn't have to be quoted verbatim in whatever translation you favor to keep Aristotle from smiting you with thunderbolts or some such.
The original use is for all intents and purposes dead outside of a small group of language purists who mostly appear to be using it to annoy people who use the new meaning.
That the new meaning rises from a misunderstanding of its original use is irrelevant - a lot of language changes are a result of "mistakes" of one form or another.
Nobody you know, maybe. I remember hearing Tony Blair use it (in the original sense) in Parliament once and I know I've read it several times in British publications.
I wonder if it is still properly used in the UK, then?
A piece on it with some numbers on usage
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/mind-your-language/2010/may/...
"After more than 35 years in journalism I can recall precisely one occasion when "begs the question" was used to describe a logical fallacy, by the philosopher and sometime Guardian columnist Julian Baggini."
The Telegraph has something like 147 usages in the modern meaning and none I could find in the old, I found 1 usage in the old meaning in about 70 in the new meaning in the Financial Times, there's a couple usages in The Times in the modern sense and none in the old.
Here's the singular usage of it in the old sense across these three publications
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e6f9f436-b788-11df-8ef6-00144... (interestingly I believe Caldwell is an American)
If there's more usages in the older sense then I just missed them it's so rare.
I've never actually heard it said out loud in the old meaning and the only time I'm even aware that there was a prior usage of the phrase is when some pretentious, pedantic, proscriptivist with a dangerously improper understanding of how languages work gets involved and tries to correct how other people use the phrase with a hopeless archaic usage that's long since fallen out of fashion.
I don't think I've ever heard the phrase "raises the question" in my entire life. I'd say that phrase, now that I roll it around on my tongue a bit, sounds hopeless awkward and nonsensical. You can't actually "raise" a question, you can raise awareness about a question. You can "ask" a question, or you can have a situation that requires a question be asked -- e.g. the situation can "beg" the question be asked. But raising a question doesn't really make any sort of sense in any possible usage. At any rate, if "raise" is meant to be used in the same way that one can "raise" awareness, then the meaning is still different than begging a question be asked. For example,
"I would like to beg for your awareness about the plight of the African tree frog."
has a more urgent meaning than
"I would like to raise your awareness about the plight of the African tree frog."
I don't just want you to have some slight exposure to the frog, it is of great importance to me that you learn about this frog and his plight. It's so important that I'll beg you to learn about it. Something that is reserved only for people in a desperate situation.
If these meanings of the two words are considered, than a situation can "beg" or "raise" questions with the same sort of urgency qualities as a person.
But as for 'raises the question' I'm sure it is fairly common, I get 23 m hits on nytimes.com. I have no idea where to find a count of usage like you did for 'begs the question'. I also don't really have a problem with using it in general. I just take it to mean bringing a question to someone's attention with no particular urgency (or lack thereof) attached.
The most important quality of all in language is the simple question "does it succeed in communicating?" I've seen many writings, in dense, linguistically correct, nuanced English that utterly failed to communicate at all, and many writings by semi-literate teenagers that succeeded despite great irregularities in their usage of the tongue.
Every English speaker knows what "begs the question" means in the modern meaning, it is effective communication. Very few people know in the old. It is not effective to communicate using the old meaning with a modern general audience. That is poor use of Language.