1. if a statement or situation begs the question, it causes you to ask a particular question It's all very well talking about extra staff but it rather begs the question of how we're going to pay for them.
As a philosophical term of art, 'Begging the question' is a logical fallacy whereby the conclusion of an argument is just the restatement of the premise(s).
Commonly however, it is used to mean 'raises or leads the question'.
Whether the common usage is correct or not depends on which side of the descriptive/prescriptive language fence one sits on. (A matter totally off topic)
I am aware of its philosophical meaning. But normally one does not correct someone's usage of a word if that usage is in the dictionary, even if it might not have been fifty years ago, except if the topic under discussion is philosophy or logic.
Yes, but that's not what the phrase originally meant. Its usage has changed over the years to the point where things like your source consider the new version to be accurate.
However, there are many - including myself for a time - who still fight to preserve the original meaning. I stopped doing it when I realized that a) English is a fluid language, and b) some people - again, possibly including myself - simply liked to correct people to show off.
I hate this trivially predictable response. Similar to observations of Betteridge's Law of headlines, "begs the question" corrections just seem like HN karma pumps.
Notably, it does not mean what the logical grouping of those words would mean: "begs for the question to be asked".
Of course, I believe I've seen "begs the question" used correctly exactly never, and there's an obvious need for a pithy idiom for "begs for the question to be asked", but we don't really have one.
This once again awakens my suspicions that the English language is an elaborate practical joke. And I say that as a native speaker.
The misuse of "irony" is another one of those situations that seems to show that there's a missing word in the English language.
To take one specific example from Alanis, (yes I'm going there), there's something peculiarly funny about "ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife" in a way that wouldn't be if you had "ten thousand turtles when all you need is a knife". I think we needed a word for "bittersweet happenstance", and people wrongly latched onto "irony".
Which is presumably where the confusion with irony (as a stand-alone word) comes from.
Interestingly enough, the term exists in a literal translation in other languages, too: "Ironie des Schicksals" in German, "ironie du sort" in French, and "ironia della sorte" in Italian.
It's just a way of filling time and distancing yourself from the question. Irregardless of pendantry about the definition you usually improve your sentence by just leaving it out.
